T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film (Bloomsbury Companions) 9780567666208, 9780567666215, 9780567666222, 0567666204

Citation preview

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

ii

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film Edited by Richard Walsh

T&T CLARK Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the T&T Clark logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2018 Copyright © Richard Walsh, 2018 Richard Walsh has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work. Cover image © Dennis Hallinan / Alamy Stock Photo All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-0-5676-6620-8 ePDF: 978-0-5676-6621-5  ebook: 978-0-5676-6622-2 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents List of Figures List of Contributors

vii viii

Introduction: Biblical Film Studies  Richard Walsh 1 Part 1  Contexts Apocalypse Noir: The Book of Revelation and Genre  Michelle Fletcher 21 Counting Errors or Understanding Filmic History: Historiophoty and Bible Films  Anne Moore 36 3 In the Creator’s Image: Divine and Mundane Self-Reproduction in Science-Fiction Films  Christopher Heard 49 4 Murderous Archaeologists, Doubting Priests, and Mesopotamian Demons: The Bible in Horror and Adventure Cinema  Kevin M. McGeough 60 5 Comedic Films and the Bible  George Aichele 73 6 The First Seventy Years of Jesus Films: A Canonical, Source-Critical History  Jeffrey L. Staley 79 7 Justice, Empire, and Nature: Deliverance, Covenant, and New Creation in East Asian Cinema  Sze-kar Wan 93 8 Biographical Approaches to Jesus Films: Prospects for Bible and Film  Dwight H. Friesen 104 9 Frames and Borders in Deuteronomy and Films on the Palestinian–Israeli Conflict  Brian Britt 115 10 “Blessed Are the Peacemakers”: The Deployment of Jesus in American and German Cinema During and After the First World War  David J. Shepherd 124 11 German Jesus Movies  Reinhold Zwick 139 12 Once Upon a Time in the West . . . The Fate of Religion, the Bible, and the Italian Western  James G. Crossley 151 1 2

Part 2  Theories 13 A Return to Form: Bible, Film Theory, and Film Analysis  Laura Copier 165 14 Seven Stations of Affect: Religion, Affect, and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ  Robert Paul Seesengood 174

vi Contents 15 Rock Me Sexy Jesus?: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Films  Rhiannon Graybill 187 16 “Sooner Murder an Infant in Its Cradle”: Wisdom and Childlessness in The Sweet Hereafter  Jay Twomey 198 17 Son of Man: A Case Study in Translation, Postcolonialism, and Biblical Film  Hugh S. Pyper 210 18 American Slavery, Cinematic Violence, and the (Sometimes) Good Book  Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch 223 19 Deleuze on Film, and the Bible  George Aichele 238 20 There’s a New Messiah in Town: The Messianic in the Western  Robert Paul Seesengood and Richard Walsh 248 21 Lars von Trier’s Dogville as a Cinematic Parable  Matthew S. Rindge 260 Part 3  Texts 22 Can We Try that Again?: The Fate of the Biblical Canon on Film  Matthew Page 273 23 Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow: Noah’s Flood in Recent Hollywood Films  Adele Reinhartz 287 24 A Genre(s) Approach to The Prince of Egypt  P. Jennifer Rohrer-Walsh 300 25 “What Child Is This?”: Reflections on the Child Deity and Generic Lineage of Exodus: Gods and Kings  Richard Walsh 311 26 “What Shall We Do with the Tainted Maiden?”: Film Treatments of the Book of Esther  Deborah W. Rooke 322 27 Desert Tales: Mark and Last Days in the Desert  Tina Pippin 335 28 A Revolutionary Passion Film: Giovanni Columbu’s Su Re (The King)  Lloyd Baugh 346 29 A Deadly Daughter?: Salome’s Cinematic Afterlife  Caroline Vander Stichele 358 30 Belief Is in the Eye of the Spectator: Beholding the Other Actor’s Reaction  Jon Solomon 369 31 Ben-Hur (2016): Jesus Finds a Voice  Larry J. Kreitzer 381 Filmography Film Index Modern Author Index Scripture Index

393 404 408 412

List of Figures Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2 Figure 1.3 Figure 6.1 Figure 6.2 Figure 6.3 Figure 6.4 Figure 9.1 Figure 9.2 Figure 10.1 Figure 10.2 Figure 10.3 Figure 10.4 Figure 10.5 Figure 10.6 Figure 11.1 Figure 16.1 Figure 21.1 Figure 21.2 Figure 22.1

Background blinds in the train carriage in Strangers on a Train (1951) 26 The shadows of the blinds are clearly highlighted in Chinatown (1974) 26 Ned gropes Matty in Body Heat (1981) 27 James Tissot’s The Youth of Jesus 82 The shadow of the cross in From the Manger to the Cross (1912) 82 The death of Judas in Il vangelo secondo Matteo (1964) 89 The death of Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) 90 Assembling the set in The Law in These Parts (2011) 119 Burnad repairs cameras in Five Broken Cameras (2011) 121 Crucifixion in the distance in Intolerance (1916) 125 The spectacle of the cross in Intolerance’s coda (1916) 126 Ferdinand encounters the Christ in Civilization (1916) 128 Jesus abandons his incarnation of the count in Civilization (1916) 129 Jesus disarms Phil’s hatred of the German enemy in The Unbeliever (1918) 132 Judas in I.N.R.I. (1923) 134 The disciples and Mary Magdalene in hiding in Jesus Cries (2015) 142 Nichole’s half-smile in The Sweet Hereafter (1997) 205 Closing credits of Dogville (2003) 266 The minimalism of Dogville (2003) 267 Biblical films plotted for story against time 274

List of Contributors George Aichele (PhD, Northwestern) is a retired professor, Adrian College Department of Philosophy and Religion. He is the author of numerous articles and books dealing with film, TV shows, and other fictional narratives in relation to biblical texts, by way of semiotics, poststructuralism, and the philosophy of language. Lloyd Baugh is a Canadian Jesuit priest and retired professor of film and theology at the Pontificia Università Gregoriana in Rome. He has written Imaging the Divine: Jesus and Christ Figures in Film (1997). His major areas of research and publication are the gospels in film, film and spirituality, and the films of Krzysztof Kieślowski. Brian Britt is Professor and Chair in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech. He studies the Hebrew Bible and its modern reception in literature and cultural thought. His most recent book is Postsecular Benjamin: Agency and Tradition (2016); other books include Biblical Curses and the Displacement of Tradition (2011) and Rewriting Moses: The Narrative Eclipse of the Text (2004). He received his PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School. Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch chairs the Theology Department at Eastern University where she serves as professor of biblical studies. She has written and edited extensively on the intersection of biblical studies and film criticism, with a special emphasis on biblical reception in film. Recent works include The Bible in Motion (2016) and Noah as Antihero: Darren Aronofsky’s Cinematic Deluge (2017). Laura Copier is an assistant professor of film and television studies at Utrecht University. Her research is focused on the interdisciplinary exchange between religion and popular culture, with particular reference to film. Her monograph Preposterous Revelations: Visions of Apocalypse and Martyrdom in Hollywood Cinema 1980-2000 (2012) analyzes the divergent representations of the Apocalypse, in image as well as in words, in contemporary Hollywood cinema. James G. Crossley is Professor of Bible, Society, and Politics in the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible, St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London. His main areas of research are Christian origins and contemporary political receptions of the Bible and religion. Among his most recent publications is Harnessing Chaos: The Bible in English Political Discourse since 1968 (2016). Michelle Fletcher is associate lecturer at the University of Kent and research assistant at King’s College, London, on The Visual Commentary of Scripture. She is the author of Reading Revelation as Pastiche: Imitating the Past (2017) and has written various biblical film pieces on Frankenstein’s monsters, Terminator sequels, and Exodus: Gods and Kings.

List of Contributors

ix

Dwight H. Friesen is an independent scholar living near Vancouver, British Columbia (BC), and adjunct faculty at Trinity Western University, Langley, BC. His main area of research is Bible, religion, and film. He is the author of “The Reception of Biblical Films in India: Observations and a Case Study” (2016), “La Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ (Pathé Frères, 1907): The Preservation and Transformation of Zecca’s Passion” (2016), and “Karunamayudu: Seeing Christ Anew in Indian Cinema” (2008). Rhiannon Graybill is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. She specializes in gender, sexuality, and the Hebrew Bible. Graybill is the author of Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets (Oxford, 2016). Christopher Heard is Professor of religion and Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence in Seaver College at Pepperdine University. His interest in studies of the Bible in/and film spring from his broader research into the reception history of the book of Genesis. His most recent biblical film piece is “Drawing (on) the Text: Biblical Reception in Animated Films” (2016). Larry J. Kreitzer is a fellow at Regent’s Park College (since 1986). He is also the tutor for Graduate Admissions at the college and holds a research lectureship within the Faculty of Theology and Religion in Oxford. Research interests include Pauline studies, focusing on the Corinthian Correspondence, Philemon, and Ephesians; numismatic research as applied to the New Testament; and the New Testament and modern literature and film. Film-related publications include Pauline Images in Fiction and Film (1999); Gospel Images in Fiction and Film (2002); Philemon (2008); articles on “Ben-Hur” and “Blue” (2012); “The Obtrusive Glimpse: Alfred Hitchcock and the Naked Young Man (Mark 14:51-52)” (2016). Kevin M. McGeough is Professor of archaeology in the Department of Geography at the University of Lethbridge. Having excavated in Israel, Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt, he is the editor of The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research. He is currently researching the reception of Near Eastern Archaeology in a variety of media and has recently published a three-volume book on archaeological reception in the Victorian era, The Ancient Near East in the Nineteenth Century (2015). Anne Moore is a member of the Department of History in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Calgary. Her research interests include Christians origins, Christian apocryphal texts, women in early Christianity, and religion and film. She has taught religion and film courses for twenty years and done various presentations. Previous publications include Moving Beyond Symbol and Myth: Understanding the Kingship of God of the Hebrew Bible Through Metaphor (2009); “Days of our Lives: Destructive Homemakers” (2017); and “Desperate Housewives in the Protevangelium of James” (2013). Forthcoming publications include “The Reception of Jesus in the Longer Ending of Mark.” Matthew Page is an independent scholar who has been working in the area of the Bible on film for over fifteen years. Recent contributions include “There Might be Giants: King David on the Big (and Small) Screen” (2016); “Roberto Rossellini: From

x List of Contributors Spiritual Searcher to History’s Documentarian” (2016); and numerous articles in The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. He is best known for his Bible Films Blog (since 2006). Tina Pippin is the Wallace M. Alston Professor of Bible and Religion at Agnes Scott College. She is the author of Death and Desire: The Rhetoric of Gender in the Apocalypse of John (1992) and Apocalyptic Bodies: The Apocalypse of John in Text and Image (1999). Hugh S. Pyper is Professor of biblical interpretation at the University of Sheffield. His main research interest is in the often unacknowledged influence of biblical concepts and metaphors on contemporary society. His publications include An Unsuitable Book: The Bible as Scandalous Text (2005) and The Unchained Bible: Cultural Appropriations of Biblical Texts (2012). Adele Reinhartz is Professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada. She has been a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School, Yale Divinity School, Brite Divinity School, and Boston College, as well as a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, NJ. She has published extensively in the areas of New Testament and Bible and Film. She is the author of seven books, including Befriending the Beloved Disciple: A Jewish Reading of the Gospel of John (2001), Scripture on the Silver Screen (2003), Jesus of Hollywood (2007), and Bible and Cinema: An Introduction (2013). Matthew S. Rindge is Associate Professor of religious studies at Gonzaga University where he teaches religion and film, and Bible and film. In addition to his books Profane Parables: Film and the American Dream (2016) and Jesus’ Parable of the Rich Fool: Luke 12:13-34 among Ancient Conversations on Death and Possessions (2011), he has published several articles and essays on Bible and film. He also chairs the Bible and Film section in the Society of Biblical Literature. P. Jennifer Rohrer-Walsh is Codirector of the Honors Program and Professor of English at Methodist University. She has published articles in the area of Bible and film related to her interests in coming-of-age and Shelley’s Frankenstein. Her academic interests are hospitality, Buddhism, and female self-actualization. Deborah W. Rooke is Research Associate in the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture and Associate Lecturer in Old Testament Hermeneutics at Regent’s Park College, Oxford, and an associate member of the Oxford Faculty of Theology and Religion. Her research interests include cult and ritual in the Old Testament, gender and sexuality in the Old Testament, and the use of the Old Testament in Handel’s Israelite oratorios. Major publications include Zadok’s Heirs: The Role and Development of the High Priesthood in Ancient Israel (2000), Handel’s Israelite Oratorio Libretti: Sacred Drama and Biblical Exegesis (2012), and two edited volumes on sexuality and gender in the Hebrew Bible (2007; 2009). Robert Paul Seesengood is Associate Professor of religious studies and chair of classical languages at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania. He is author of The Athlete and the Gladiator in Early Christianity (2006), Paul: A Brief History (2010), and (with Jennifer Koosed) Jesse’s Lineage: The Legendary Lives of David, Jesus and Jesse

List of Contributors

xi

James (2013). His work concentrates on the reception and history of interpretation of biblical texts, particularly the letters of Paul and John’s Apocalypse. David J. Shepherd is Lecturer in Hebrew Bible at Trinity College Dublin, and Director of the Trinity Centre for Biblical Studies. He is the author of The Bible on Silent Film: Spectacle, Story and Scripture in the Early Cinema (2013) and the editor of The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897–1927) (2016) as well as various articles in biblical studies. He is currently cochair of the Bible and Visual Culture program unit of the Society of Biblical Literature’s International Meeting. Jon Solomon is Robert D. Novak Chair of Western Civilization and Culture and Professor in the Department of Classics, Medieval Studies Program, and Media and Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. His areas of research are classical reception, ancient Greek music, opera, and film. His publications include Ben-Hur: The Original Blockbuster (2016) and Boccaccio: Genealogy of the Pagan Gods (2011; 2017; and forthcoming). Jeffrey L. Staley is a retired, independent scholar who taught most recently at Seattle University. He is the founder of the Society of Biblical Literature’s Bible and Film section. His publications include Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination: A Handbook to Jesus on DVD (with Richard Walsh, 2007), “What Hath New York City to do with Khayelitsha?” (2013), “Martin Scorsese’s Aviator as Theological Complement to his Last Temptation of Christ” (2016), and numerous entries in The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. He is also coeditor, with Richard Walsh and Adele Reinhartz, of Son of Man: An African Jesus Film (2013). Jay Twomey is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Cincinnati. His primary area of interest is the reception of Paul. He is the author of The Pastoral Epistles Through the Centuries (2008) and 2 Corinthians: Crisis and Conflict (2013); and is coeditor, with Richard Walsh, of Borges and the Bible (2015). Caroline Vander Stichele is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her research and publications focus on gender issues in early Christian literature and the cultural impact of the Bible. Her most recent publication is Close Encounters between Bible and Film: An Interdisciplinary Engagement (2016), coedited with Laura Copier. Richard Walsh is Codirector of the Honors Program and Womack Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Methodist University. His areas of interest include the gospels, the gospels’ cultural interpretations (including film), and theories of interpretation. His publications include Three Versions of Judas (2010), Finding St. Paul in Film (2005), Reading the Gospels in the Dark (2003), and Mapping Myths of Biblical Interpretation (2001). Sze-kar Wan is Professor of New Testament at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. His major areas of research include Pauline studies, postcolonial and Asian American hermeneutics, and neo-Confucianism. His publications include Power in Weakness: Conflict and Rhetorics in Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians

xii List of Contributors (2000); The Bible in Modern China: The Literary and Intellectual Impact (1999); and forthcoming books on Romans and 2 Corinthians. Reinhold Zwick is Professor for Biblical Theology and its Didactics in the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Münster (Germany). His major areas of interest include the dialogue between theology and movies, narrative and readerresponse studies of the gospels, and Wirkungsgeschichte of the Bible. His major publications include Evangelienrezeption im Jesusfilm. Ein Beitrag zur intermedialen Wirkungsgeschichte des Neuen Testaments (1997); Passion und Transformation. Biblische Resonanzen in Pier Paolo Pasolinis “mythischem Quartett” (2014); “The Book of Job in the Movies: On Cinema’s Exploration of Theodicy and the Hiddennes of God” (2016); and “Reading Biblical Stories with Cinematic Eyes: A Methodological Approach from the Perspective of Transmedial Narratology” (2016).

Introduction: Biblical Film Studies Richard Walsh

How significant was Gibson? By most accounts, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) reinvigorated mainstream biblical film.1 Numerous niche films and even some epics have followed. Although none has been as successful as Gibson’s blockbuster, nothing like the marketstifling King of Kings (1961) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) has yet ended this renewed interest in biblical film.2 Reports of new projects, even big-budget endeavors, remain common. From the beginning of cinema, religious organizations were involved in filmmaking due to their interest in the medium’s pedagogical, apologetic, and evangelical potential (see Lindvall 2007; Lindvall and Quicke 2011; on church horror/rapture films, see Beal forthcoming). Nonetheless, perhaps the biggest change in biblical film, sparked at least partly by Gibson’s success, is the increasing production of films made by and appealing to the religious right. The Bible (2013), Son of God (2014), and A.D. (2015) are the most famous examples, but they are only the tip of this iceberg.3 In addition to independent production companies, major studios now devote departments to producing such niche films (see Horwitz 2014; Honeycutt 2016). Biblical film criticism is also as old as film. Early silent productions had religious advisers of various kinds, and explanatory lectures often accompanied such films. While the concerns therein were primarily homiletical, interest in geography, history, and ancient cultures was also evident.4 Theologians have long attempted to trace faith and/or religion’s relationship to culture through the arts, including film (see, e.g., the discussion in Martin and Ostwalt 1995). Studies in religion and culture/arts also have a long pedigree in the American Academy of Religion.5 The AAR has had a group devoted specifically to the study of religion and film since the mid-1990s. Scholars associated with the AAR were also responsible for the 1997 founding of the influential Journal of Religion & Film. As the Society of Biblical Literature met jointly with the AAR until 2008 (and concurrently since 2011), the AAR’s Religion and Film group has had a major impact on biblical film scholars. In fact, one might see the fields of theology and religious studies as the often-uncongenial parents of biblical film studies. Within biblical studies itself, the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media group of the Society of Biblical Literature, founded in the early 1980s, was an early home for biblical film studies, as were other “experimental” SBL groups fostering poststructural,

2

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

semiotic, and/or ideological approaches. What these places had in common was a resistance to historical criticism’s almost imperial dominance of biblical studies and an attempt to find other ways of seeing and interpreting the Bible. If theology and the study of religion are the parents of biblical film scholarship, these experimental groups are the older siblings. This third foundational element was, of course, reflective of changes in the academy at large in the latter decades of the twentieth century (on the place of biblical studies in the academy, see Moore and Sherwood 2011). During this period, some biblical scholars became interested in semiotics, in politics (of interpretation, identification, and privilege), in cultural studies, and in popular culture.6 “Experimental” journals, like Semeia, founded in 1974 (until 2002),7 and broad-minded presses, like Sheffield Academic Press (succeeded by Sheffield Phoenix Press), founded in the mid-1980s by Philip R. Davies and David J. A. Clines, also provided a home for such work. One Semeia volume—Biblical Glamour and Hollywood Glitz (Bach 1996)—is particularly noteworthy. Given this volume’s significance—along with the rise of the AAR’s Religion and Film group and the beginning of Larry Kreitzer’s influential series of works “reversing the hermeneutical flow” (1993; 1994; 1999; 2002; see Reinhartz8 for assessment)—one might make a case for the 1990s as the most important era in biblical film scholarship B.G. (before Gibson).9 As Gibson’s film appeared in 2004, changes in the academy appear more foundational for the development of biblical film studies than that film. Changes in the technology of film production and delivery also played a role (see Page). While VCR tapes led the way in making biblical films available for academic study and pedagogical use, the digitalization of film (and, therefore, DVDs and electronic streaming) has proven more transformative. DVD players became available in the mid-1990s and became affordable by the end of the century.10 YouTube, and other streaming sources, now make many (particularly silent) biblical films available that were long inaccessible.11 If The Passion of the Christ did not found biblical film studies, its popularity did raise the profile of biblical film studies. It also increased the sheer amount of biblical film scholarship—just as it inspired more biblical films. Everyone wrote about Gibson, and many of those have not ceased to write since about other biblical films.12 In addition to articles and books now too numerous to even mention, special symposia and regular sessions at major professional meetings pursue such interpretations. When the AAR and SBL split in 2008, for example, a public planning session was held immediately for a new SBL Bible and Film consultation. That group held its first session in 2009 and continues its work today, even though the AAR and SBL have been meeting concurrently since 2011. The International Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting has also had a Bible and the Moving Image unit since 2012.13 Important dictionaries and encyclopedias on the Bible’s place in culture, including film specifically, are now available: for example, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and the Arts (Beal 2016); and the ongoing, projected thirty volumes of The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (Helmer et al. 2009-). Now, each important new biblical film gets its own volume of criticism: for example, Noah (Burnette-Bletsch and Morgan 2017); Exodus: Gods and Kings (Tollerton 2016); and Ben-Hur (Ryan and Shamir  2016).14 Further, several presses have launched series devoted to reception

Introduction  3 history/criticism, which is an expansive new home for biblical film work. For example, in addition to The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, De Gruyter sponsors two series on biblical reception (including The Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception) as well as the Journal of the Bible and Its Reception. Finally, various volumes, like the present handbook, assay introductions to or overviews of this still relatively new field of study (see Reinhartz 2013; Burnette-Bletsch 2016b).15 This activity demonstrates that biblical film criticism is a robust scholarly endeavor. Despite homiletical and theological beginnings, it is now clearly different—if not “come of age”—from its “foundations,” advancing along the lines of semiotics, cultural studies, ideological criticism, and reception criticism. The chapters in this book reflect this diversity in approach. Despite the recent proliferation of reception history/ criticism, no one perspective, approach, or methodology governs biblical film studies (compare Copier).

Biblical film? Before turning to the contributions herein, I would like to entertain two further, introductory questions. First, what constitutes a biblical film? It should go without saying that both “Bible” and “film” are abstractions or constructions. Materially, there are Bibles and films (and digital cinema and television and so forth). Moreover, Adele Reinhartz has recently pointed out that film uses the Bible selectively, focusing primarily on Genesis, Exodus, Samuel, Kings, Esther, Ruth, Job, Gospels, and Revelation (2013: 231–33; see also Page). She further observes that the “Hollywood Bible” of the classical biblical epic is not actually even this selection of texts, but a Christian, US cultural interpretation of them (2013: 11). Biblical film, however, is not limited to the classic epic (and its forerunners and imitators). In fact, Reinhartz has repeatedly suggested quite diverse ways in which film employs the Bible (see Reinhartz 1999; 2003: 184–87; 2013: part 2). Film quotes the Bible, includes the Bible as talisman, borrows biblical plots, characters, themes, and images, reprises biblical texts in a new media and in new genres, alludes to or suggests the Bible, and so on (see Burnette-Bletsch 2014; 2016a). In trying to come to grips with this cornucopia, Reinhartz suggests a division between “Bible on film” (clear reprises of a biblical story like the epics) and “Bible in film” (various other still “tangible” uses of the Bible in film). Requiring less tangible foundations, other scholars happily compare ostensibly nonbiblical films to biblical texts on the basis of allusions, implications, or simply their own interpretations. Biblical scholars have long conducted such forays, which some now refer to as “Bible and film,” rather than “Bible on/in film” approaches (compare Exum 2006). Theological interpretations, particularly Christ-figure analyses, are precursors here (see Seesengood and Walsh). In fact, scholars often explain the Bible on/in film and the Bible and film distinction by reference to the difference between Jesus films and Christ-figure films.16 That heritage partly explains some scholar’s leeriness of such readings. They may be politically motivated, dangerous, even eisegeses—but then all interpretations are. Thus, even though working within biblical reception, Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch

4

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

asserts that some of these readings, which she calls analogues, have value; therefore, she argues for a place for these “interpretation-centered” pursuits in reception history (2016a: 10).17 In fact, one possible effect of such readings might be to find new insights, previously hidden by theological/biblical/political certainties. It might also partly answer film scholars who still rightly castigate biblical film scholarship for unduly privileging the Bible, as well as for ignoring film form and mechanics (see Copier). Kreitzer’s “reversing” was an early challenge to such privileging—and an example of efforts to find new insights through Bible and film forays. He advocated starting with film (and literature) rather than with the Bible and thereby finding new insights into biblical texts through the lens of fiction (see Reinhartz’s experiment herein). In a 2002 collection of essays, Screening Scripture, George Aichele and Richard Walsh attended to Kreitzer and to Jorge Luis Borges’s idea that later texts (films) create their precursors (biblical texts), rather than vice versa, and argued therefore that every reading of any text is a newly created intertext(uality) (2002: vii–xiii).18 Thus, while (some form of) the Bible antedates any (form of) film and while biblical academics may relentlessly privilege Bible over film, a generation now reads Exodus (if at all) through the formative lens of The Prince of Egypt (1998; see Rohrer-Walsh) and the gospels through the lens of The Passion of the Christ (2004).19 In fact, for many, The Prince of Egypt and The Passion of the Christ are (the) scripture—as The King of Kings (1927) and The Ten Commandments (1956) were for earlier times. Thus, in addition to Bible on/in film and Bible and film, there is also film as Bible (in Matt Rindge’s felicitous phrase). Such investigations look not just to classic biblical films, which act like scripture, but to any film, which acts biblically (or religiously) (see Friesen; Britt; Seesengood; Seesengood and Walsh; Rindge). Such adventures, like those of Bible and film, broaden “biblical film” so much that it is difficult to know in advance that any film is “non-biblical,” or, more accurately, incapable of being read alongside biblical texts and/or scholarship.

Why Bible and film? Second, even though the question obviously comes too late in the day: Why Bible and film?20 The reasons are legion. However, the bottom line is filmmakers’ perception of the Bible’s religious and cultural significance.21 Associating with the Bible gave early film and filmmakers prestige. Film still uses the Bible to provide depth, significance, and even universality to its stories, characters, and themes, as well as “realism” to its mise-en-scènes. The Bible is also a source of stories without copyright issues. Once, the Bible also provided readily recognizable stories. On one hand, film could suggest stories that the audience would recognize and even fill in as need be. On the other hand, these biblical stories also invited fictional expansion (see Pippin), given their lacunae, particularly in terms of what modern audiences expected from stories: for example, heroic characterizations, romance, and psychological motivations. Biblical stories still yield themes beloved by filmmakers: for example, heroism, sacrifice, salvation, melodrama, near-escapes, apocalyptic scenarios, and theodicy.

Introduction  5 Despite the familiarity of some of its stories, the Bible also represents a titillating, exotic world, an opportunity for travels (and travelogues) to alternative realities, before returning safely to the domestic. In fact, despite its violent and sexual content, filmmakers often see and present a family-values, child-friendly Bible (see RohrerWalsh; compare Rooke). Further, biblical film almost always supports the status quo (see Crossley; Graybill; Aichele; Rindge; Rohrer-Walsh). Not surprisingly, the Bible often appears in film simply to help characterize, to create either good or bad characters, depending upon the characters’ use/abuse of the Bible (see Burnette-Bletsch). Film uses the Bible to construct audience identities. The Bible furnishes “origin” accounts for the community/nation/culture, which define the film audience as free, democratic, just, spiritual, righteously violent, and so forth (see Shepherd; Crossley). More importantly, film uses the Bible to depict its audience as the goal of history and even as divinely destined. More recently, film deploys the Bible to promote individualistic self-expression, a tactic that has led to niche-marketing. Of course, filmmakers have often presented the Bible for theological, apologetic, and evangelistic purposes (see Friesen). At times, the cinematic Bible simply represents power. Like the cross, the Bible is a talisman warding off and defeating evil, as well as rendering matters holy or dangerous (see McGeough). The miraculous, otherworldly Bible is an antidote to or an escape from the everyday. Biblical film is overwhelming spectacle (see Walsh). As such, and in other ways, biblical film is sacred, although in modern, capitalist ways, not in ways normally associated with the biblical texts (see Crossley).22 Given creative, independent filmmakers (who critique and innovate within the tradition) and the long history of biblical film, contrary examples can be found for each statement above or, more accurately, each statement applies only to some films. To qualify those statements, I will suggest some general trends in the tradition— without, however, attempting to write a history of biblical film (see Page).23 A further, interlocking caveat is necessary: the history of biblical film is not linear; later tendencies do not replace former ones completely; the earliest forms/objects/movements linger as ghosts and sometimes even revenants; and innovation is always possible in a tradition. Biblical film begins in worship and art (forms) and moves toward spectacle and story (epic). Classical biblical film (epic) is part of (US and other) nationalisms and civil religions, but later biblical film migrates toward subjective, individualistic religion/faith. Biblical film belongs to the mass media, to popular culture, and to consumer capitalism, but some efforts clearly challenge the “givens” or norms of the biblical film tradition (and their culture’s status quo; see Rindge). In Julie Sanders’s terminology (2006: 1–41), such films appropriate, rather than merely adapt the Bible, and, as such, they are often on the cusp of Bible and film (Burnette-Bletsch’s allusions and analogues), rather than Bible on/in film. While hagiography and sanctity dominate, appropriations are sometimes sites of ambivalence and ideological critique, if not parody (as are comic efforts generally; see Aichele). While biblical film belongs to the mass media, its technology, marketing, and projected audience have become so sophisticated that niche efforts are now more common than big-budget projects. But, of course, to answer the original question—why Bible and film?—I must also consider why biblical film attracts (primarily) biblical scholars. Given the review

6

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

above of biblical film scholarship’s lineage, I can be brief. Some biblical scholars, like their theological precursors, do film criticism for theological and apologetic reasons. They want to defend the faith and perhaps even convert others. Others do so for more obviously political reasons. Where film once deployed the Bible to bask in its cultural significance, biblical scholars now use film to raise their own cultural profile and importance. Thereby, they assert their relevance or that of academic studies more generally. In short, both theologians and politicians use biblical film studies to construct their own (academic and cultural) identities. Biblical scholars, like other religion scholars, also do film studies for pedagogical reasons. Some do so simply to pique student interest. Some use film to illustrate possible interpretations of texts or even academic methodologies (Fletcher; Moore; Staley). Some do so to provoke comparisons between different media and cultures. Some do so to highlight the inevitably modern nature of present biblical interpretation. Other scholars seek lines of flight from the theological aura of previous biblical studies (Aichele). Some answer historical criticism’s dominance with defenses of biblical film studies as part of the reception history of the Bible (Burnette-Bletsch 2016a). Some are reacting to and are part of changes in the academy at the end of the last century. They are interested, like the larger academy, in semiotics (Aichele; Copier), politics (Crossley; Britt), culture (Wan; Friesen; Shepherd; Zwick; Pyper), and popular culture. Some of these seek to explain the status quo; others to challenge it; others to speak for the margins (Britt; Graybill; Twomey; Burnette-Bletsch; Pyper; Rindge). Some seek difference; some transcendence; some the messianic (Seesengood and Walsh); some simply comparisons and conversations. Most emphasize interpretation’s ubiquity and interested, non-innocent nature. Interpretation is not thereby weak or evil; it is simply human.

The essays Accordingly, the contributors here do not speak uniformly, nor do they desire to do so. They do not define the Bible or film in the same way. They employ different methods and advance from different perspectives. Further, neither they nor this book is comprehensive. After all, the Bible is always a newly created abstraction, news films are endlessly produced, and new methods perennially enter the academy. Instead, this collection represents a kind of snapshot of current biblical film studies. A reader might do well to think of the contributors in this collection as attempting to establish conversations between something called the Bible (or some biblical text), something called film, and themselves. Further, most of the authors know one another, in terms of their work if not personally, and they have their agreements and disagreements and their ongoing conversations. These are carried on, as far as I know, in goodwill. Accordingly, a reader could profit from imagining the conversation herein also as a conversation among the various authors. The general topic of which is—what exactly do we think we are doing when we say we are doing biblical film studies, and why are we doing it?

Introduction  7 Such a diverse collection is hard to structure meaningfully without too much heavy-handedness. The division between theological, mythical, and ideological approaches in Martin and Ostwalt’s 1995 collection attracts me, but it does not fit the contributions here.24 The distinction recently elaborated by Matthew Rindge between myth and parable (2016; herein) is also attractive, but again does not quite fit these chapters. Instead, I will use a simpler distinction between contexts, theories, and texts. The separation claims that the contributors focus primarily on one of those three to establish their conversations. Each chapter, however, could easily be placed in a different section. The three distinctions do, however, make some sense. The attention to film genres addresses what some film critics have seen as a serious weakness in biblical film critics’ tendency to focus on particular films as if they were unique aesthetic objects, rather than being, in many ways, stereotypical mass-market products (see Blake 2008). The consideration of theory calls attention to the constructive, foundational work of interpretation in biblical film criticism. Finally, the section on specific texts concentrates not only on the biblical texts, which seem to appear most often in biblical film interpretations (see Page), but also on the recent biblical films, which invite this “rethinking” of this field (Seesengood; Pyper; Reinhartz; Walsh; Pippin; Baugh; Kreitzer). In the contexts section, Michelle Fletcher, Anne Moore, Christopher Heard, Kevin McGeough, George Aichele, and Jeffrey L. Staley read biblical film in light of certain generic constructs. Fletcher demonstrates how scholars create genres, like film noir and apocalyptic, by privileging certain texts. She shows that US critics and audiences recognized noir only when the 1970 and 1980 neo-noirs exaggerated, intensified, and selectively imitated certain precursors, re-presenting these films as noir, which were previously seen as other film genres. Similarly, biblical scholars styled certain texts as apocalypses, previously seen as other genres, only when they reenvisioned them through the lens of Revelation. Like and unlike those previous texts, Revelation defines and defies the apocalypse genre. Following historians like Robert Rosenstone, Anne Moore argues that biblical films are “history-making” and that biblical scholars should drop their obsession with film’s historical and biblical errors. The cinematic construction of history inevitably differs from academic history, which scholars tend to privilege. Further, various film genres construct history differently: the epic tends to monumental, mythological history while the biopic creates individualized, everyday history. Christopher Heard compares several science-fiction films with themes in Gen. 1–3. Science fiction often offers materialist origin myths, but such films simply move the problem of why there is life at all back to another place or race, rather than resolving the issue. Heard also contends that science-fiction creators lack the biblical creator’s nobility. In fact, they so exploit their creations that he wonders if humans can imagine non-supernatural creators who create out of beneficence. Kevin M. McGeough contends that the supernatural Bible of horror and adventure cinema is an ancient other monstrously threatening scientific modernity. In such films, archaeologists are particularly liable to unleash these past dangers, but religious

8

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

authorities’ expertise can also make them a force for good—and the Bible itself (used properly) can possess magical, salvific powers. George Aichele situates “comedic” films in the context of (episodic, cyclical) classical comedy. The Christian churches have a long-standing aversion to the genre, particularly with reference to New Testament materials. Accordingly, few comic Bible films exist. More allude comically to biblical material in passing. He wonders if readings of non-biblical comedies, in intertextual tension with the Bible, might invite a comic reading of the Bible. Jeffrey L. Staley argues that the first seventy years of Jesus films roughly parallels the scholarly consensus on the gospels’ origins. Early silents represent something like oral gospel traditions. From the Manger to the Cross (1912) is a kind of proto-Mark, preceding the Markan The King of Kings (1927). King of Kings (1961) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) revise that source and form thereby film’s “Synoptic Gospels” (although the last film resembles John, rather than Matthew). Finally, the maverick Il vangelo secondo Matteo (1964) completes the four-gospel film canon. Later films return to pre-canonical forms or reaffirm this film canon. The chapters by Sze-kar Wan, Dwight H. Friesen, Brian Britt, David J. Shepherd, Reinhold Zwick, and James G. Crossley situate biblical films in their respective cultural contexts. Sze-kar Wan explores East Asian cinema, looking at justice and vengeance in Park Chan-wook’s South Korean vengeance trilogy, bureaucracy and corruption in three Chinese historical epics, and nature in Hayao Miyazaki’s animation. He finds similarities to biblical texts, particularly Paul’s letters, in the notions that human good lies in forgiveness, instead of revenge (Park’s trilogy), that hopes for resistance to closed, corrupt systems lie in small, committed communities (the Chinese epics), and that all nature (including humans) is interconnected and sacred (Miyazaki’s animation). Dwight H. Friesen foreswears biblical film studies’ obsession with textual practices to imagine films as social objects. The biographies of such are inseparably entangled with the lives of those who produce and consume them. Thus, The Passion of the Christ (2004) may be a vehicle for devotional meditation on the stations of the cross. Jesus (1979) is often an evangelistic tool. Friesen traces in more detail the 1978 Indian Karunamayudu’s complicated production history and religious repurposing, as well as its formative influence on its producer-star’s biography. Brian Britt considers the analogy between artistic frames and political borders. If frames construct versions of reality, frame-breaks call attention to genre/reality’s contingent, constructed nature. The changing names (and ownership) of territory between the time/place of the story told and that of the story’s telling in Deuteronomy/ Joshua—as well as the disjoint between the promise of complete control of the land and recognition that the “conquest” was incomplete—are examples of biblical framebreaks that undo the common notion that biblical texts unequivocally support specific political borders. The frame-breaks of contemporary documentary films on the Palestinian–Israeli conflict also support such incomplete, non-universalizing interpretations. David J. Shepherd discusses several films as political interventions in the Great War. Before the United States’ entry into the war, Intolerance (1916) and Civilization (1916)

Introduction  9 deployed a pacifist Jesus. After the United States’ entry into the war, The Unbeliever (1918) silenced Jesus’s command to love one’s enemies. After the war, German cinema, rather than US or French cinema, returned the apolitical, pacifist Jesus to film in I.N.R.I. (1923) for the express purpose of constructing a civilized, nonviolent Germany. Reinhold Zwick notes that German Jesus films since the silent era differ dramatically from the historicizing gospel harmonies of countries like Italy and the United States. German films translate Jesus’s passion into contemporary Germany or imagine Jesus’s return to contemporary Germany in a fashion similar to Dostoevsky’s “the Grand Inquisitor.” While these “return” films are comic, most still deal seriously with theological issues and with the question of Jesus’s relevance to contemporary society. James G. Crossley traces the domestication of political radicalism in Sergio Leone’s “Spaghetti Westerns.” Leone’s Dollars Trilogy shifts from the revolutionary politics of the radical Italian Westerns to an amoral world in which death reigns through various entrepreneurial outlaw figures. Then, in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), as the age of the gunslinger comes to an end, a business class emerges. With death under control, a new town emerges linking the church and re-sacralized Christianity with other capitalist interests. Traces of radicalism remain to perform radicalism for audiences who are left to consume with impunity. In this book’s second part, Laura Copier, Robert Paul Seesengood, Rhiannon Graybill, Jay Twomey, Hugh Pyper, Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch, George Aichele, Robert Paul Seesengood and Richard Walsh, and Matthew S. Rindge take up various (film) theories to explore biblical film. Film scholar Laura Copier situates film theory in the humanities and notes an absence of a grand, unifying theory. She points out that most theories come from a generative question and argues that the question of accuracy, now enshrined by reception history and a textual focus, still dominates biblical film scholarship. To move past this myopia, Copier calls for a commitment to formalism, to film poetics (following David Bordwell). Robert Paul Seesengood explains affect criticism, a turn toward reflection on embodied viewing, by applying the method to The Passion of the Christ (2004). Seesengood notes that passion plays and cinematic horror both rely on the affect of blood and gore, an affect that dominates Gibson’s extended scourging scene. When Gibson links Jesus’s eviscerated, consumed body to communion, he connects horror’s affect to religious devotion (holy fear). Rhiannon Graybill illustrates biblical films’ modern, conservative constructions of gender and sexuality by examining the animated, family film The Prince of Egypt (1998), the musical Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), and the blockbuster Noah (2014). Heroes, masculinity, and the male body preoccupy the films, which are heterosexually normative, so they “naturally” depict villains and the Other as sexually perverse and ambiguously gendered. Jay Twomey reads The Sweet Hereafter (1997) as a queer Wisdom text by placing it (and the eponymous novel) alongside Wisdom texts and queer theorist Lee Edelman, who rejects “the Child” and the conservative politics of heterosexual normativity as “kid stuff ” in favor of jouissance. In the film, after many of a small town’s children die in a tragic bus accident, the more prominent characters (particularly Nichole)

10

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

embrace the present as a new “sweet hereafter,” a future now. This jouissance resembles Qoheleth’s wisdom. Hugh Pyper examines issues of translation and postcolonialism in Son of Man (2006). The hybrid film features a black actor as Jesus and Xhosa dialogue, but has an English paratext and subtitles, which cannot be turned off on the DVD version. While carefully teasing out how a British viewer and a Xhosa one might interact differently with the film, Pyper contends the film has the capacity to defamiliarize and refamiliarize both the Jesus story and recent African politics for both audiences. Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch interrogates recent films’ depiction of slavery, violence, and the Bible. Django Unchained (2012) and The Birth of a Nation (2016) use violence weakly and exploitatively, reflecting simplistic ethical dichotomies. In both, the “bad” use violence and the Bible to oppress; the “good” use violence and the Bible to liberate. By contrast, 12 Years a Slave (2013) defers empathy and catharsis by inverting tropes like that of the “good master” and a story arc moving from slavery to freedom. It also explores the antebellum use of the Bible complexly, particularly with a “likeable” master who, nonetheless, uses the Bible to deify himself. George Aichele explicates Gilles Deleuze’s two-volume analysis of film’s material medium and “movement image” through a brief look at Pasolini’s 1964 Il vangelo secondo Matteo. Aichele contends, however, that Deleuze’s overall project might be more important to biblical film scholarship as Deleuze’s notions of virtualities and simulacra amount to a cinematic model of consciousness/reality. An even greater benefit for biblical films scholars lies in Deleuze and Guattari’s distinction between paranoid (totalitarian) and schizophrenic (dispersing, diversifying) signifying systems. The Bible, Western culture, and biblical film tend toward the former. Some biblical texts and some less popular films suggest, however, schizophrenic lines of flight or a postsignifying regime.25 Robert Paul Seesengood and Richard Walsh reject popular, but critically reviled Christ-figure analyses in favor of forays with Benjamin’s messianic. Their approach abandons the unique and the theological for the particular and political. They find Benjamin’s disruptive, outlaw messianic in the (redemptive) outlaws and “Indians” of Shane (1953) and The Revenant (2015) respectively. Unlike clearly defined Christ figures, the messianic is unknown as it/he/she is outlaw and yet to come. Matthew S. Rindge reads Lars von Trier’s 2003 Dogville as a parable challenging conventional US wisdom about human goodness and the virtue of grace. In the film, grace/mercy enables abusers. It is justice/judgment that liberates. The film also uses open-ended techniques, as do some of Luke’s parables, to invite its audience to “experience-taking,” self-critical reflection. Like Matthew’s parable of the Sheep and the Goats, Dogville is most harshly critical of those who do not act for the weak. In part three, Adele Reinhartz, P. Jennifer Rohrer-Walsh, Richard Walsh, Deborah W. Rooke, Tina Pippin, Lloyd Baugh, Caroline Vander Stichele, Jon Solomon, and Larry J. Kreitzer focus on a particular biblical or cinematic text (or theme). Matt Page introduces the section with a helpful overview of film’s biblical canon. Beginning with the 1920 spectacles, he demonstrates that six biblical stories have been most cinematically popular: Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah, Moses, Samson and Delilah, David, and Jesus. Jesus’s story appears most often. Interestingly, far more and

Introduction  11 more diverse biblical stories appeared in the early silent era and then again at the turn of the third millennium—with television series, cheaper video technology, and church-related broadcasts all contributing to the canon’s broadening. Adele Reinhartz explores the recent Noah (2014), Evan Almighty (2007), and Moonrise Kingdom (2012) to test Kreitzer’s “reversing” hermeneutic. The films differ from Genesis because they focus on two contemporary issues, the environment and the family. Noting cinematic variation in the cause of the flood leads Reinhartz to imagine film viewers returning to Genesis and wondering if that story tries to tame fears of random natural disasters with its divine depiction. While all three films might also lead to reflections on the justness of the Genesis God, other parts of Genesis’s reception history would provoke similar questions. P. Jennifer Rohrer-Walsh discusses The Prince of Egypt’s value as children’s art by looking at the film through different generic lenses. She argues the film is a weak biblical adaptation, Bildungsroman, and epic, respectively, because of its confusing divine representation, its lack of focus on trials and the possibility of failure in the move to adulthood, and its failure to inculcate a strong sense of people vis-à-vis an opposing other. The film is most successful as a myth, supporting modern, conservative US norms, but she cautions that one must decide if these mythic values are the ones that one wants for one’s children. Richard Walsh claims that God’s depiction as child in Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) represents post-Enlightenment anxieties about true believers and their gods and, simultaneously, calls attention to Exodus’s own preoccupation with divine prerogatives, jealousy, and property. The film’s divine characterization tinges this biblical epic with horror and mingles elements from earlier films in Scott’s oeuvre, such as Gladiator (2000), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), and Alien (1979). The decidedly nonreligious biblical epic does, however, raise far more ethical questions about religious violence than Exodus does. Deborah W. Rooke examines four Esther films in terms of their setting, ending, characterization, and theme. The 1960 epic and two Christian productions (2006, 2013) historicize the biblical Esther, sometimes adding background to reflect concerns about anti-Semitism (1960) or democracy (2006), but always shifting away from the book’s Jewish carnivalesque Purim setting. These three films also improve Esther’s morality. By contrast, Amos Gitai’s 1985 Esther hews closer to the Hebrew text by adding no religious observances, by having Esther spend a premarriage night with the king, and by having her request the enemies’ slaughter. By shooting scenes in ruined Arab sections of modern Haifa and casting a Palestinian actor as Mordecai and an Israeli as Esther, Gitai also uses the tale to reflect on Israeli oppression of Palestinians. Tina Pippin explores deserts as contested places in Mark, Rodrigo García’s 2015 Last Days in the Desert, and Jim Crace’s Quarantine. Both fictions fill out Mark’s sparse tale. García focuses on Jesus’s conflict with his father through his conversations with devil(s) and through the difficult relationships in a desert family with which Jesus stays. Crace’s Jesus also looks for God, but learns he cannot discriminate between God and Satan, and dies in the wilderness, only to be brought back to life in the “word” of the mercenary figure Musa. For Pippin, the dispossessed still wander and die in similar wildernesses (borders) today.

12

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Lloyd Baugh highlights three important transformations of the Jesus film tradition by Giovanni Columbu’s 2012 Su Re (The King): 1) It replaces film’s typically beautiful Jesus with Isaiah’s unseemly servant (Isa. 53:2). 2) It opts for flashbacks, multiple and diverse versions of the same scene, and the episodic (like the pre-gospel, oral traditions some imagine), rather than a linear, harmonizing gospel narrative. 3) The film struggles with the mystery of Christ provocatively, rejecting the cinematic tradition’s sentimental escapism. Often not in the frame’s center, this Jesus is not yet in gospel focus (compare Pasolini’s Jesus films). Caroline Vander Stichele discusses two cinematic Salomes, with particular attention to their reprises of Oscar Wilde’s conceit of the dance of the seven veils. The 1953 Hollywood epic “saves” Salome by having her dance to save John and by having her convert to Christianity with her Roman lover Claudius. In Carlos Saura’s 2002 “dance performance” film, Salomé dances to kill John, because the ascetic John has rejected her advances. In both films, Salome is hardly a femme fatale. Jon Solomon reflects on the “divine portrayal” of Jesus in the 1959 Ben-Hur. He argues that not showing Jesus’s face is much rarer in the Jesus film tradition than it is often thought to be and that film typically represents a character’s meta-human force on another by cutting back and forth between both faces. The famous cup of water scene in the 1959 epic is rather unusual then as it studiously avoids showing Jesus’s face. Everything depends upon the other actor’s reactions. Solomon expands his considerations of this scene to include reflections on similarities and differences between religious and cinematic “belief.” Larry J. Kreitzer compares the 2016 Ben-Hur to six previous versions. Compared to the famous 1959 epic, the 2016 film innovates by giving Jesus six important speaking scenes (and by filming him as a character rather than elliptically). The speeches emphasize a message of love and forgiveness, and Kreitzer traces this theme’s nuances in the Ben-Hur tradition by focusing on Jesus and Judas’s reciprocal offering of a cup of water (in four of the films, with clear substitutions in two others) and on Jesus’s prayer for forgiveness for his enemies (Lk. 23:34). The 2016 film dramatizes the latter with a forgiving embrace between Ben-Hur and Messala at the cross.

Whither biblical film scholarship? The contributions here suggest a move away from questions of accuracy to interpretation (or even comparison). From possession (of the truth) to a search (for something, perhaps undefined). From defense of the status quo to lines of flight (from empire, hagiography, and spectacle?). From theology and history to ethics, politics, and aesthetics. However, the past (or the tradition) is, of course, never the past. The foundations of biblical film criticism—the from whence—remain—some think hauntingly so. Where biblical film scholarship will go is, of course, uncertain. If it addresses some of the problems and weaknesses raised by the essays here, it will need to become more semiotic (see Copier; Aichele 2016). It will need to become more conversant with film studies and with broader movements in the humanities generally. In fact, some of the essayists here might already see themselves as working in cultural studies, semiotics,

Introduction  13 or aesthetics, rather than in religion or theology. Questions of transcendence, for example, look rather different in aesthetics than in theology (see Solomon). Future studies might well turn to film’s actual human reception (see Friesen; Seesengood; Pyper). This might encourage reflection not only on affect, but also on religion (and identity construction). It might also encourage more serious, critical engagement with the films of the religious right. Future studies might also give still more attention to non-Hollywood films (see Shepherd 2008; Wan; Britt; Zwick; Crossley; Pyper; Rindge; Rooke; Baugh). Such an attempt might help biblical film scholars avoid the tyranny of the status quo (see Britt; Aichele; Rindge; Rohrer-Walsh). Fortunately, no approach or perspective imperially dominates biblical film studies. Biblical film scholars can help resist the tyranny of the one, approved approach by insisting on the political, interested, identity-constructing nature of all interpretation. To that end, they would do well to remember that no Bible exists, only Bibles, or abstractions, or intertexualities. They might do well to look for lines of flight—or even for the unheimlich. It is too easy to become comfortable, at home, with our own interpretations.

Notes 1 My thanks to Adele Reinhartz, Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch, Jeff Staley, and Rob Seesengood for kindly supplying advice and information for this introduction. Errors are, of course, my own. 2 As the story is generally told, the “failure” of these two films (The Bible [1966] is sometimes added to the list) ended the Golden Age of biblical films. Shifts in audience and filmmaking (for example, the end of the Motion Picture Production Code and the “New Hollywood” of the late 1960s and 1970s) likely had more to do with the end of big-budget biblical films. If, and/or how exactly, Gibson revived biblical film is still under review. Matt Page attributes the relative failure of post-Gibson biblical epics to Hollywood’s failure to understand Gibson’s marketing success, which depended to a great degree on Gibson’s ability to craft a “persecution story” (for himself and for his film) that strongly resembles identity stories in right-wing religion in the United States, which depict the faithful’s persecution by liberalism and Hollywood (see Page 2017a,b). Incidentally, the internet site for information on biblical films is Page’s Bible Films Blog, which began in 2006. 3 Matt Page claims that The Bible (2013) is Gibson’s most successful successor, not only because of its marketing, but also because it, like The Passion of the Christ, embraces and enhances biblical violence (see 2017a). 4 Olcott marketed his 1912 film as a travelogue. 5 The American Academy of Religion was founded in 1909 as the Association of Biblical Instructors in American Colleges and Secondary Schools. It became the AAR in 1963–64, a name change that reflected the group’s move to a focus on religion more broadly conceived. 6 The emergence of academic interest in popular culture certainly fostered biblical film studies, as is evident in the SBL’s Bible and Popular Culture group, which held its first sessions in 2006.

14

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

7 While not attempting to be comprehensive, I should also mention Biblical Interpretation: A Journal of Contemporary Approaches, founded in 1993. See, in particular, the special edition devoted to film, also published as a separate volume (Exum 2006). 8 Citations of authors without dates refer to those authors’ chapters in this book. 9 A flurry of other significant work corroborates the assertion: the work of Jewett (1993; 1999; see also [1973] 1984; Jewett and Lawrence 1977) and of Scott (1994); volumes on biblical epics by Forshey (1992); and Babington and Evans (1993); and several volumes on Jesus films: Kinnard and Davis (1992), Baugh (1997), Tatum ([1997] 2013), Zwick (1997), and Stern, Jefford, and DeBona (1999). 10 Capitalizing on the technology, Staley and Walsh produced a handbook for Jesus films on DVD in 2007. 11 The expanding scholarly use of the internet has also promoted biblical film studies with free online “academic” journals (like the previously mentioned Journal of Religion & Film) and reputable bloggers (like Matt Page and Peter Chattaway). 12 Given the boost that Gibson’s film provided biblical film scholarship, it is somewhat ironic that most critics treat the film negatively. Mea culpa. But see Friesen; Seesengood. 13 Beginning in 2017, the Bible and Moving Image group merged with the Bible and Visual Culture. 14 To my knowledge, no comparable volume has been devoted to the Roma Downey and Mark Burnett productions—The Bible; Son of God; and A.D. See, however, Chattaway (2013), (2014), and (2015). Arguably, such productions are more successful than Darren Aronofsky’s Noah and Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings, which did not appeal to the religious right. 15 Biblical film scholarship now even merits its own gadflies. See, for example, Bach (1999) and Copier and Vander Stichele (2016). 16 However heuristically helpful this distinction, it is often difficult to maintain in ­practice. See Walsh (2003: 29–39), (2013). 17 Her discussion is part of a broader, sophisticated attempt to categorize the various and complex cinematic uses of the Bible, ranging from various types of adaptations to possible analogues (2014; 2016: 3–11). She takes her lead from literary theorists’ work on adaptation, the most important of which are Genette ([1982] 1997) and Sanders (2006), as well as Leitch’s (2007) work on film adaptation. Some reception history scholars are far less open to Bible and film attempts, preferring to privilege the “­original” biblical text. See Copier for a critique. 18 They also did so by deliberately searching for (new) noncanonical readings of the Bible, readings not determined by the theological mechanism(s) of the canon or of historical criticism, which Aichele, following Deleuze, now refers to as “lines of flight.” See, for example, Aichele herein; (2006: 159–233 and 2014). 19 Besides these specific examples, one might argue that film generally—and its conception of the world, humans, religion, and so forth—is precursor for any Bible reading after the heyday of the biblical epic (compare Bach 2008). At least, some argue that film is the modern, technological art form, and everyone who reads the Bible today is modern. Incidentally, historical criticism is also a modern method, and thus inevitably a modern reading of the Bible. 20 Here, by “Bible and film,” I mean biblical film studies in toto, not films using the Bible in a certain way. 21 Reinhartz observes that the Bible appears in film as, and because of, its popular audience perception as relevant and divinely authoritative (2013: 6).

Introduction  15 22 See Schrader (1972) for the classic critique of biblical film as sentimental, not sacred, and as being unable to function as a vehicle to transcendence. For a more nuanced, but still negative appraisal, see Miles (1996). For more positive appraisals of film’s ability to hallow or to suggest transcendence, see Walsh (2003: 187–89), Sobchack (2008), Reinhartz (2013: 231–51); Solomon. 23 On the history of classic biblical film, see Reinhartz (2013). On silent biblical film, see Shepherd (2013). On Jesus films, see Tatum ([1997] 2013). 24 Similar distinctions can be found in religion and film collections. See reviews of such by Blizek and Desmarais (2008), Ostwalt (2008 and 2013). 25 Aichele’s own work on the Bible in popular media strives for such flights beyond the paranoid canon. See, for example, (2006 and 2014).

Works cited Aichele, George (2006), The Phantom Messiah: Postmodern Fantasy and the Gospel of Mark, New York and London: T&T Clark. Aichele, George (2014), Tales of Posthumanity: The Bible and Contemporary Popular Culture, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Aichele, George (2016), “Film Theory and Biblical Studies,” in Laura Copier and Caroline Vander Stichele (eds.), Close Encounters Between Bible and Film: An Interdisciplinary Engagement, 11–26, Semeia Studies 87, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Aichele, George, and Richard Walsh (2002), Screening Scripture: Intertextual Connections Between Scripture and Film, Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Babington, Bruce, and Peter William Evans (1993), Biblical Epics: Sacred Narrative in the Hollywood Cinema, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bach, Alice, ed. (1996), Biblical Glamour and Hollywood Glitz, Semeia 74, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Bach, Alice (1999), “Cracking the Production Code: Watching Biblical Scholars Read Films,” Currents in Research, 7: 11–34. Bach, Alice (2008), “Teaching Biblical Tourism: How Sword-and-Sandal Films Clouded my Vision,” in Gregory J. Watkins (ed.), Teaching Religion and Film, 57–76, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Baugh, Lloyd (1997), Imaging the Divine: Jesus and Christ-Figures in Film, Communication, Culture and Theology, Kansas City: Sheed & Ward. Beal, Timothy, ed. (2016), Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and the Arts, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beal, Timothy (forthcoming), Revelation: A Biography, in Lives of Great Religious Books series, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Blake, Richard A. (2008), “‘The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship’: A Response from Film Studies,” in David J. Shepherd (ed.), Image of the Word: Hollywood’s Bible and Beyond, 189–99, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Blizek, William L., and Michele Desmarais (2008), “What Are We Teaching When We Teach ‘Religion and Film’?” in Gregory J. Watkins (ed.), Teaching Religion and Film, 17–34, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda (2014), “The Bible and Its Cinematic Adaptations: A Consideration of Filmic Exegesis,” Journal of the Bible and Its Reception, 1 (1): 129–60. Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda (2016a), “General Introduction: The Bible and Its Cinematic Reception,” in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (ed.), The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of the

16

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Bible and Its Reception in Film, Part 1, Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception 2, 1–14, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda, ed. (2016b), The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of the Bible and Its Reception in Film, 2 Vols., Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception 2, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda, and Jon Morgan, eds. (2017), Noah as Antihero: Darren Aronofsky’s Cinematic Deluge, Routledge Studies in Religion and Film, London and New York: Routledge. Chattaway, Peter T. (2013), “The Bible: What Works and What Doesn’t in the Ambitious Mini-Series,” in Books and Culture. Available online: http://www.booksandculture. com/articles/webexclusives/2013/april/bible.html?paging=off (accessed May 11, 2017). Chattaway, Peter T. (2014), “The Bible and The Son of God: Just How Different Are They?” Film Chat, Patheos, July 27. Available online: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/ filmchat/2014/07/the-bible-and-son-of-god-just-how-different-are-they.html (accessed May 11, 2017). Chattaway, Peter T. (2015), “A.D. The Bible Continues—Season 1, Episode 1,” Film Chat, Patheos, April 8. Available online: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/filmchat/2015/04/ad-the-bible-continues-season-one-episode-one.html (accessed May 11, 2017). Copier, Laura, and Caroline Vander Stichele, eds. (2016), Close Encounters Between Bible and Film: An Interdisciplinary Engagement, Semeia Studies 87, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Exum, J. Cheryl, ed. (2006), The Bible in Film—The Bible and Film, Leiden: Brill. Forshey, Gerald E. (1992), American Religious and Biblical Spectaculars, Westport: Praeger. Genette, Gérard ([1982] 1997), Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, trans. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. Helmer, Christine, Steven L. McKenzie, Thomas Christian Römer, Jens Schröter, Barry Dov Walfish, and Eric Ziolkowski, eds. (2009–), The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Honeycutt, Heidi (2016), “Box-Office Prophets: The Rise of the Faith-Based Film Industry,” MovieMaker, February 9. Available online: http://www.moviemaker.com/ archives/moviemaking/directing/box-office-prophets/ (accessed May 10, 2017). Horwitz, Simi (2014), “Filmmakers Find Faith: Religious-themed Stories Make a Comeback in Theaters,” Film Journal International, July 8. Available online: http:// www.filmjournal.com/content/filmmakers-find-faith-religious-themed-stories-makecomeback-theatres (accessed May 10, 2017). Jewett, Robert ([1973] 1984), The Captain America Complex: The Dilemma of Zealous Nationalism, Santa Fe: Bear. Jewett, Robert (1993), Saint Paul at the Movies: The Apostle’s Dialogue with American Culture, Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Jewett, Robert (1999), Saint Paul Returns to the Movies: Triumph over Shame, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Jewett, Robert, and John Shelton Lawrence (1977), The American Monomyth, Garden City: Anchor. Kinnard, Roy, and Tim Davis (1992), Divine Images: A History of Jesus on the Screen, New York: Carol. Kreitzer, Larry J. (1993), The New Testament in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic. Kreitzer, Larry J. (1994), The Old Testament in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic.

Introduction  17 Kreitzer, Larry J. (1999), Pauline Images in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic. Kreitzer, Larry J. (2002), Gospel Images in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic. Leitch, Thomas (2007), Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind to the Passion of the Christ, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lindvall, Terry (2007), Sanctuary Cinema: Origins of the Christian Film Industry, New York: New York University Press. Lindvall, Terry, and Andrew Quicke (2011), Celluloid Sermons: The Emergence of the Christian Film Industry, 1930-1986, New York: New York University Press. Martin, Joel W., and Conrad E. Ostwalt, eds. (1995), Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth, and Ideology in Popular American Film, Boulder: Westview. Miles, Margaret (1996), Seeing and Believing: Religion and Values in the Movies, Boston: Beacon. Moore, Stephen D., and Yvonne Sherwood (2011), The Invention of the Biblical Scholar: A Critical Manifesto, Minneapolis: Fortress. Ostwalt, Conrad E. (2008), “Teaching Religion and Film, A Fourth Approach,” in Gregory J. Watkins (ed.), Teaching Religion and Film, 35–54, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ostwalt, Conrad E. (2013), “The Bible, Religion, and Film in the Twenty-first Century,” Currents in Biblical Research, 12 (1): 39–57. Page, Matt (2006-), Bible Films Blog. Available online: http://biblefilms.blogspot.com/ (accessed May 11, 2017). Page, Matt (2017a), “How The Passion of the Christ Wrong-footed Hollywood,” Bible Films Blog, February 16. Available online: http://biblefilms.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/howpassion-of-christ-wrong-footed.html (accessed May 21, 2017). Page, Matt (2017b), “The Nativity Story from The Passion to Trump,” Bible Films Blog, May 21. Available online: http://biblefilms.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-nativity-story-frompassion-to-trump.html (accessed May 21, 2017). Reinhartz, Adele (1999), “Scripture on the Silver Screen,” The Journal of Religion & Film, 3 (1). Available online: http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol3/iss1/3/ (accessed May 13, 2017). Reinhartz, Adele (2003), Scripture on the Silver Screen, Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Reinhartz, Adele (2013), Bible and Cinema: An Introduction, London and New York: Routledge. Rindge, Matthew S. (2016), Profane Parables: Film and the American Dream, Waco: Baylor University Press. Ryan, Barbara, and Milette Shamir, eds. (2016), Bigger than Ben-Hur: The Book, Its Adaptations, and Their Audiences, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Sanders, Julie (2006), Film Adaptation and Appropriation, London and New York: Routledge. Schrader, Paul (1972), Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, Berkeley: University of California Press. Scott, Bernard Brandon (1994), Hollywood Dreams and Biblical Stories, Minneapolis: Fortress. Shepherd, David J. (2013), The Bible on Silent Film, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shepherd, David J., ed. (2008), Image of the Word: Hollywood’s Bible and Beyond, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Sobchack, Vivian (2008), “Embodying Transcendence: On the Literal, Material, and the Cinematic Sublime,” Material Religion, 4 (2): 194–203.

18

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Staley, Jeffrey L., and Richard Walsh (2007), Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination: A Handbook to Jesus on DVD, Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Stern, Richard C., Clayton N. Jefford, and Guerric DeBona (1999), Savior on the Silver Screen, New York: Paulist. Tatum, W. Barnes ([1997] 2013), Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years, Salem: Polebridge. Tollerton, David, ed. (2016), A New Hollywood Moses: On the Spectacle and Reception of Exodus: Gods and Kings, Biblical Reception 4, London and Oxford: Bloomsbury. Walsh, Richard (2003), Reading the Gospels in the Dark: Portrayals of Jesus in Film, Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Walsh, Richard (2013), “A Beautiful Corpse: Fiction and Hagiography,” in Richard Walsh, Jeffrey L. Staley, and Adele Reinhartz (eds.), Son of Man: An African Jesus Film, 192–205, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Zwick, Reinhold (1997), Evangelienrezeption im Jesusfilm: Ein Beitrag zur Intermedialen Wirkungsgeschichte des Neuen Testaments, Studien zur Theolgie und Praxis der Seelsorge 25, Würzburg: Seelsorge/Echter.

Part One

Contexts

20

1

Apocalypse Noir: The Book of Revelation and Genre1 Michelle Fletcher

Is Revelation an apocalypse, or apocalyptic? Why is it different from other apocalypses? Convincing answers remain elusive. Turning to film scholarship on genres, and particularly work on film noir, is helpful here. For Rick Altman genre is a construct and scholarship itself plays a part in this construction. Therefore, what is needed is an understanding of how scholarly awareness of genres came into being (Altman 1999). In light of this, I explore here how scholars first came to view apocalypse as a genre, and what part Revelation played in this awareness. To do this I create an intimate dialogue with the scholarly awareness of film noir, which is today immediately recognized, but was not always so tangible. This journey will reveal how apocalypse and noir scholarship can enter a productive partnership and hold up a mirror to each other,2 albeit somewhat darkly.

Apocalypse awakes How did some documents gain the designation “apocalypse”? Morton Smith’s extensive study of all things Ἀποκάλ- can find no instances of a work describing itself or its proceedings with the adjective, noun, or verb prior to Revelation. Also, the first external vision he finds labeled Ἀποκάλυψις is Revelation itself, presenting a new usage of the word, as prior to this it referred to more general revelation.3 Therefore, Smith believes Revelation to be the first known work to have this title and to use the term to describe external visions (1983; see also Aune 1988: 226–27; 1997: 3–4). David Aune shows how by the second century Ἀποκάλυψις as a title features in the works of Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Canon Muratori.4 Thus “it was Revelation which gave its name to the other apocalypses” (Blevins 1980: 393).5 Therefore, scholarly understanding of Ἀποκάλυψις, both in relation to external visions and as a literary title, stems from the opening of Revelation.

22

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Apocalyptic awareness Although the title “apocalypse” was applied to many works after Revelation, it was not until the nineteenth century that texts now classified as apocalypses were grouped together in a way that resembles generic understanding (Hilgenfeld 1857; Barr 2006: 78).6 Prior to this they were most frequently classed as prophecy (see Bauckham 1993: 5). Initially, the similarities between Revelation and Daniel were discussed, then the discoveries of new manuscripts of Greek Apocalypse of Ezra, The Sibylline Oracles, and Ethiopic Enoch led to texts being grouped together under the term apokalyptik (Koch 1972; Koch and Schmidt 1982; Schmithals 1975: 50–67; Collins 1993: 52–54; Collins 2011). Friedrich Lücke (1832) produced the first major work which connected “apocalyptic” texts in a systematic way, his central focus being Revelation, and how other texts related to it. He still viewed the body of literature as prophecy, albeit a late form with a distinctive outlook. Twenty years later Eduard Reuss (1850) and Adolf Hilgenfeld (1857) similarly saw the texts as a type of prophecy trending during 150 bce–150 ce, which they felt was best-termed “apokalyptik.” After these studies, interest in apokalyptik/apocalyptic exploded with the term referring to both texts and theological concerns (Sturm 1989). Studies moved away from Revelation and literary forms and toward Pauline theology and early Christian outlooks. Only after the Second World War was a systematic attempt made to separate the literary and theological concepts enameled into apokalyptik/apocalyptic. Having traced the roots of the scholarly term, Klaus Koch concluded, The adjective apocalyptic is not directly derived from the general theological term apokalypsis, in the sense of revelation, at all; it comes from a second and narrower use of the word, also documented in the ancient church, as the title of literary compositions which resemble the book of Revelation, i.e., secret divine disclosures about the end of the world and the heavenly state. The word apocalypse has become the usual term for this type of book. It is also applied to books and parts of books to which the ancient church did not as yet give this title—for example the synoptic apocalypse of Mark 13. (Koch 1972: 19, emphasis added)

So, Koch demonstrates that apocalyptic, when used in academic parlance to describe literary works, began as a word to describe Revelation and was extended to describe works sharing prominent features with Revelation, like visions and divine disclosures: In the last two hundred years historical scholarship has gone over to the practice of classifying Old Testament books and parts of books also as apocalypses, whenever (like the New Testament Book of Revelation) they contain visions of the events of the end-time and catechetical matters associated with these things. (Koch 1972: 19, emphasis added)

Koch reveals that the scholarly use and understanding of apocalyptic and apocalypse has grown out of a comparison of texts with Revelation (compare Prigent 2004: 6).



Apocalypse Noir: The Book of Revelation and Genre

23

When scholars were formulating apocalypse/apocalyptic, the lens they were gazing through was Revelation.

Ascribing apocalypse The publication in 1979 of John Collins’s Forms and Genres Project led to the influential definition of apocalypse: A genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supernatural world. (Collins 1979b: 9)

This (now benchmark) definition was created by bringing texts together to identify what features were key to an apocalypse. The texts examined were those “called apocalypses or .  .  . referred to as apocalyptic by modern authors, and any other writings which appear to be similar to these” (Collins 1979b: 4–5). Given the apocalyptic/apocalypse classification that Collins’s project inherited, it would be expected that this study would find Revelation to be the apocalypse par excellence.7 Yet, the group’s comparison found Revelation lacked features many others shared, such as pseudonymity, vision interpretation, and narrative conclusion. It was less like the texts, which had been grouped around it, than they were to each other. Since this seminal project, the debate has continued and terms have been nuanced, but a common feature in the discussion remains Revelation’s ambiguous status as an apocalypse. How ironic—the book that provided scholarship with the term apocalypse is frequently seen as no longer befitting it. Instead, apocalyptic is often chosen to best describe it.8 Although the definition of apocalyptic may have moved on considerably, the fact remains that Revelation is now described by a word which originated to describe something which looked like it.

Summary Revelation is at the center of and instigated apocalyptic scholarly discussions. Scholarship inherited the term “apocalypse” from its opening word. Texts called apocalyptic initially gained such designations when they resembled Revelation. A scholarly awareness came about while looking at other texts in relation to Revelation. Therefore, when Collins and his group were categorizing what constituted an apocalypse, the texts they brought together were essentially grouped with Revelation as the key apocalypse/apocalyptic text. However, Revelation did not sit comfortably alongside other apocalypses; it was different. Past attempts to explain this strange turn of events range from extensive subgenre categorization to multiple source theories (Collins 1998; Hanson 1975; Rowland 1982; Rowley 1964; Russell 1964). However, apocalypse/apocalyptic are not discussed in the ancient world. Discussions and

24

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

constructions of these categories have occurred in modern scholarship, which has grouped texts called apocalypses, noticed a worldview called apocalyptic, and argued about what is and is not of the genre apocalypse. All this has happened with Revelation as the lens through which other texts have been viewed. A filmic comparative analysis, examining how genre construction can come about through retrospective viewing, precisely because of techniques used in certain texts, can help explain Revelation’s place as genre defier precisely because it is the genre definer.

Noir knowing: Film noir and neo-noir In the postwar years, as biblical scholars were busy defining apocalyptic, Hollywood was producing films which created similar categorization issues. Against the grain of patriotic war films and song and dance routines came different films, today called film noir: a group of films awash with dark streets, moody lighting, sex, violence, drifters, and femme fatales. However, Richard Dyer points out that “the makers of Detour, Double Indemnity, Gun Crazy and The Postman Always Rings Twice did not know that they were making film noirs” (2007: 128). When first produced, they were created under different categories: “mysteries,” “detective films,” and “crime dramas.”9 Yet, they are now recognized as film noir. How did this retrospective re-categorization occur?

That noir feeling The concept of film noir began when French critics used the term noir to denote a sensibility present in certain films, recognizing John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941), Edward Dmytryk’s Murder, My Sweet (1944), and Fritz Lang’s Woman in the Window (1944) as departures from Hollywood conventions. French viewers felt their mood was darker and so called them film noir, a term previously used to describe Gothic novels and cheap crime literature (Frank 1946; Naremore 2002: viii–ix). The first critical grouping of films as noir was done by Borde and Chaumeton (1955), who also describe noir in terms of affective properties and sensations, such as the “oneiric, strange (or Kafkaesque), erotic, ambivalent, and cruel,” rather than in terms of specific generic tendencies (Naremore 2002: xiii). American critics did not notice this new sentiment until the end of the 1960s (Martin 1999; Naremore 2002; Silver and Ursini 1996; compare Higham and Greenberg 1968). Therefore, film noir “did not become a true Hollywood genre until the Vietnam years” (Naremore 2008: 37). It took even longer to become common outside of film criticism. Todd Erickson labels Dennis Hopper’s The Hot Spot (1990) the first film marketed as film noir (1996: 307). Clearly, film noir is a retrospective construct. Nevertheless, it captures the likeness of a group of films. Watching Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946), Howard Hawks’s The Big Sleep (1946), and Edgar Ulmer’s Detour (1945) back-to-back makes it obvious they can be grouped together, even if their original classifications were not the same (romantic thriller, mystery, and crime drama, respectively).



Apocalypse Noir: The Book of Revelation and Genre

25

Dyer argues that an awareness of film noir came about through the creation of films now known as neo-noir in the 1970s and 1980s: films such as Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat (1981), and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) (Dyer 2007: 119–30). These films reworked previous films to present them to audiences afresh. However, these films were not simple remakes, hence their gaining the title neo-noir. Instead, they re-presented via the technique of pastiche. Pastiche in film studies denotes a neutral imitation, which cuts, selects, foregrounds, and exaggerates past texts in order to re-present them to the audience; it creates something “like but not the same as” what has gone before (Dyer 2007; Hoesterey 2001; Rose 1991). While similar to parody, it does not have parody’s inherent criticism (hence Fredrick Jameson’s [1991] infamous description of pastiche as “blank parody”). Pastiche’s reworking of past texts from this neutral position provides the audience with a new viewing location, and this can bring about an awareness of past features previously unseen. Therefore, Dyer argues that neo-noir’s pastiching highlighted the similarities of a group of films previously ungrouped, which led “not only to fixing the perception of the genre . . . but to identifying its very existence” (2007: 128).10 Noir began as a sensibility inherent in certain films. What neo-noir pastiches did was fuse together and affirm these sensibilities, making films which were tangibly noir. A sentiment previously felt became a genre with discernible features now known as film noir. Neo-noir presented the key traits of these films differently. When seen as crime films, detective movies, and melodramas, audiences would have looked for guns, gang lords, clues, victims, shooting scenes, and so forth. When re-presented as noir, audiences looked for cigarettes, chiaroscuro lighting, Venetian blinds, mournful jazz tunes, sexually charged language, femme fatales, and so forth. The alteration, exaggeration, highlighting, cutting, and selecting of a group of precursors made “essential noir” generic features visible and brought about a new genre categorization.

Blatant blinds and scripted sax It is hard to imagine a film noir without Venetian blinds, yet blinds were not a key stylistic feature at first. They were a fashionable window-covering, which the chiaroscuro lighting highlighted.11 The whole wall of Venetian blinds in Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955) creates atmosphere and shadows, but it is a background feature. Similarly, the blinds on the train windows in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951) create shadows, but do not function prominently in the mise-en-scène (see Figure 1.1). However, neo-noir Chinatown uses blinds more self-consciously, indicating their importance in its first line: “All right, Curly. Enough’s enough. You can’t eat the Venetian blinds. I just had them installed on Wednesday.” In the next scene, all the faces are held by the blinds’ shadows with obvious effect, trapping and uniting the characters by these shadows (see Figure 1.2). Once a functional window-covering, neo-noir’s blinds now function as a plot indicator. Similarly, the soundtracks of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) and of Blade Runner feature mournful alto saxophones, a defining sound for those observing the past

26

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Figure 1.1  Background blinds in the train carriage in Strangers on a Train (1951).

Figure 1.2  The shadows of the blinds are clearly highlighted in Chinatown (1974). body of films through the lens of neo-noir. Yet the saxophone, and even jazz, were not predominant in film noir, which tended to be full of strings and piano, more akin to thrillers like Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959) (Dyer 2007: 124; Butler 2002).12 Yet, today these sax-soundtracks are “essential noir.” Therefore, neo-noir took marginal, often time-bound, features of past films and made them integral, unmissable, and centered. What viewers may have subconsciously realized featured in past films as part of contemporary fashion was served up in full color by neo-noir.



Apocalypse Noir: The Book of Revelation and Genre

27

Seething sex and violence Neo-noir’s different temporal location from its past referents—during Vietnam, after the sexual freedom of the 1960s, and after the introduction of the ratings system— allowed elements felt to be noir in past films be presented in their fullness in a way they could not have been in the originals. For example, sexual tension is viewed as part of film noir’s essential fabric. However, in the postwar era sex was only hinted at with a look, witty banter, or a kiss. In Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past (1947) Jeff and Kathie dry each other’s hair with a towel, and then Jeff kisses Kathie’s neck. The towel is then thrown carelessly aside, knocking the light over, and the camera cuts away from the couple, following its motion. The door then blows open and the music crescendos as the camera moves outside. Everything is implied. However, in Body Heat there are frequent, graphic sex scenes, and from their first encounter all is shown (Dyer 2007) (see Figure 1.3). This indicates distance from past texts, as steamy sex scenes could not have been filmed in the 1950s. It also exaggerates past sentiments and tensions so that they are not just felt, but also seen. Violence and brutality are also now seen as key noir elements. As with sex, how much of this was shown differs. For example, in Kiss Me Deadly’s opening shot the audience hears Cristina tortured to death, but sees nothing, whereas in Chinatown’s finale, the audience hears blood-curdling female screams and sees the bullet-hole-andall view of Mrs. Mulwray’s face. Neo-noir made explicit the sex and violence implicit in noir, in all its reality, re-presenting simmering sensibilities in a more exaggerated and intense way, making them integral, unmissable, and centered. Therefore, after watching a neo-noir it is near impossible to return to film noirs and not see the (implied) sex and violence. Once neo-noir made its viewers aware of what noir was, the past texts never looked the same again. Yet, these neo-noirs were not the same as the past works. If they had been, they would not have allowed viewers to see what had previously not been seen nor exaggerated what had only been in the background.

Figure 1.3  Ned gropes Matty in Body Heat (1981).

28

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Refracted femme fatales Dyer points out that neo-noir’s portrayal of film noir does not reflect that past purely: “What neo-noir imitates is not straightforwardly noir but the memory of noir, a memory that may be inaccurate or selective” (2007: 124). Film noir is an image/genre created by neo-noir. For example, neo-noir features a glamorous femme fatale who is calm, manipulative, and sexually controlling. However, this image plays down some characteristics of film noir females and enhances others. Neo-noir makes the well-to-do, attractive fatale a genre definer, even though she sidelines other fatales in doing so. No one would describe Detour’s portrayal of Vera as wild-eyed and windswept as a film noir fatale; it is expensively clad Vera in the motel who would come to mind. Nor is Strangers on a Train’s glasses-wearing, pregnant waitress Mrs. Haines seen as a classic fatale, even though in her nature (manipulative, smart talking, destined to die) she is. As Dyer states: “Neo-noir assures us that there was such a thing as noir and that this is what it was like, in practise side-lining . . . to fix moody chiaroscuro lighting, fatally glamorous women and midnight jazz scores as essential noir” (2007: 129).

Summary Film noir never existed as a genre when films now called noir were being made. However, today every Western filmgoer can name their key features because neonoirs such as Chinatown and Body Heat brought together certain noir elements felt in past films and provided viewers with a new textual awareness. They brought to life the feeling of noir in past films, but differed from their referents through exaggeration, alteration, and selection. This “similar but not the same” allowed viewers to see the past afresh, facilitating an awareness of film noir. This means that the colored 1970s and 1980s lens of neo-noir is what has shaped how the black-and-white 1940s and 1950s film noir is viewed. Something similar to this noir-effect happens with Revelation, which is also a generic definer and defier.

Affective apocalyptic The French noticed a sensibility in American films of the 1940s, grouping them due to this affective property, which they called noir. American audiences gained the same awareness only after neo-noir pastiche. The modern scholarly categories apocalyptic/ apocalypse began similarly with an awareness of the sensibility apocalyptic. Apocalyptic sensibility was first noticed by scholars when examining how texts such as Daniel and 1 Enoch resembled Revelation. This led Lücke, Hilgenfeld, and Reuss to observe a distinctive form of ancient prophecy, which they termed apocalyptic. Surely, then, it is logical to argue that Revelation drew attention to this sensibility13 and gave its name to the literary genre apocalypse embodying apocalyptic sensibility.



Apocalypse Noir: The Book of Revelation and Genre

29

Neo-noir created a genre by demonstrating a distinctive sensibility which had gone unnoticed. Therefore, while The Maltese Falcon may be seen as the godfather of film noir (Borde and Chaumeton 1996), it was not created as a film noir, nor was it called noir until critics retrospectively examined it through the lens of neo-noir. In the same way, although Daniel may often be declared the godfather of apocalypse/apocalyptic (e.g., Collins 1993: 58), scholars only recognized its distinctive apocalyptic nature when it was compared to Revelation. The lens of Revelation provided an understanding of this past previously unseen, re-presenting texts freshly through specific literary techniques of pastiche: exaggeration, sidelining, and foregrounding.

Seeing composite Apocalyptic scholarship noted the composite nature of apocalypse early (Collins 1993: 54; von Rad 1965: 330). Texts featured different literary forms such as “testaments, laments, hymns, woes, visions” and used a variety of smaller textual units to make up a larger document (Aune 1997: lxxvii; Koch 1972: 27). For example, 1 Enoch is constructed from parables, visions, narratives, and prayers. The visions themselves are often presented as separate occurrences, as in 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra. Aune argues that they “utilize a sequence of vision reports which are kept distinct from each other through literary markers,” leading him to believe that “the literary segmentation used by the author of the Apocalypse of John appears generically imposed” (1986: 87). However, such segmentation in Daniel is a natural process, as visions and connected materials are grouped together by scribes. Indeed, most of the Old Testament is composite in nature. Yet, very little of it is classed as apocalypse. Why then did scholars note apocalypse’s composite nature? As observed above, Venetian blinds now considered iconically noir were a natural part of the 1940s/1950s filmic landscape. Neo-noir brought this time-bound feature forward so that natural, contemporary elements became a central feature of film noir. However, not all films featuring blinds are noir. This can help explain the particular relationship between apocalypse and composite nature. Revelation contains many distinct textual forms, such as measurements, lists, narratives, visions, proclamations, dirges, and so forth. Initially, it was viewed as a collage, where many separate sections were brought together to create a new text with “clear seams” (Aune 1997: cv–cxxxiv). Scholarship has now largely abandoned this theory, affirming Revelation’s linguistic, stylistic, structural, and referential homogeneity. Although Revelation may look like a mixtum compositum, this is not a result of major scribal activity. Aune, as already noted, explains this as “generically” imposed on Revelation. However, it was by observing apocalyptic/apocalypse through the lens of Revelation that scholars noticed this feature in other apocalyptic texts. Therefore, considering our neo-noir exploration, I posit that scholars have been drawn to the composite nature of apocalypses because Revelation foregrounds this feature from past texts. It looks composite. However, due to its unified nature, Revelation must be utilizing how past texts create breaks, use multiple forms, feature various visions, and so forth in a self-conscious manner. By doing so it brings to the

30

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

fore a natural part of textual composition so that it cannot be missed. Therefore, it can be argued that Revelation’s exaggerated and self-conscious breaks impacted the way that scholars viewed other texts and in doing so elevated a feature of those texts to be a key apocalyptic feature. As a viewer realizes through neo-noir that blinds are a natural part of film noir, albeit in the background, so too does a reader through the imitation of past texts by Revelation become aware of the composite nature of the texts it re-presents.

Rampant reveal and conceal Neo-noir intensified the sex and violence in film noir, making it near impossible for a viewer not to feel or search for sexual tension. At the same time neo-noir’s “full frontal” portrayal reminded viewers that the lens they were viewing the past through was not actually the same, but was created in a different time and place. Revelation likewise intensifies features of its past referents, and in doing so emphasizes textual difference. An example of this intensification and exaggeration is the pattern of revealing and concealing. A widely accepted feature of apocalypses is the presentation of visions and explanations by a mediator, creating a concealing/ revealing textual fabric (Aune 1986: 84–87; Points 1, 2 and 4 in Collins 1979b: 6–8).14 Things initially revealed although difficult to grasp (parables, oracles, or symbolic visions) are subsequently interpreted by a mediator. Thus, Daniel is presented with a series of enigmatic visions, which confuse and terrify him (e.g., Dan. 7:2-15; 8:3-14). After these visions he receives an in-depth explanation from the angelic mediator who clearly assists the revealing of concealed material (see Dan. 7:17-26; 8:19-25; 9:24-27). He also receives three commands to seal up his visions/book (Dan. 8:26; 12:4, 9). This produces a reveal/conceal dialectic.15 Revelation is somewhat more complex, intensifying this dialectic. Revelation opens indicating that it will “reveal”: Ἀποκάλυψις (Rev. 1:1), signaling that this text will uncover things previously covered. Further commands to write and send (Rev. 1:11) indicate that the visions will be expounded to the audience. The reason for this is that the time is near (Rev. 1:3), distinct from Daniel’s distant focus: “The words are to remain secret and sealed until the time of the end” (Dan. 12:9). However, this apparent focus on revealing turns into concealing. There is no simple vision/interpretation presentation. Even apparent exceptions (Rev. 1:20; 7:13-17; 17:618) “do not reveal much” (Aune 1986: 85). For example, in Rev. 1:20 the interpretation simply declares that the lampstands are “seven spirits and seven churches.” This differs from Daniel’s complex explanations (Dan. 7:17-26; 8:19-25; 9:24-27), and as Revelation progresses the intense feeling of reveal/conceal continues. When the lamb is declared worthy to open the sealed βιβλίον (Rev. 5:5) and revelation appears to be on the horizon, the opening leads to more cryptic visions. One must wait a long time for another interpretation (Rev. 7:13-17), and again it is brief and enigmatic. As the text progresses it becomes even less revealing, as the initial command to write what is seen and send to the churches is turned on its head, when in Rev. 10:4 part of



Apocalypse Noir: The Book of Revelation and Genre

31

the vision is sealed up, never to be disclosed. This is the opposite of Daniel, where the visions are seen and explained to the audience before the sealing command. In Revelation, the dialectic of vision/interpretation, sealed/unsealed becomes a complex, exaggerated web of hide and seek, reveal and conceal, explain and confuse. Not surprisingly, scholars, when reading Daniel through the lens of Revelation, notice this reveal/conceal dialectic as distinctive, even though Daniel’s vision and interpretation format is far more revealing than concealing. After reading Revelation, the commands to seal up in Daniel become more noticeable, just as sexual tension could not be missed in film noir after it had been intensified in neo-noir’s graphic sex scenes.

Fixing perceptions: The destruction of the world Neo-noir made the glamorous, married femme fatale definitive of noir, sidelining other female portrayals in the previous body of works. Revelation also centralizes certain features while sidelining others. An example of this is the judgment/destruction of the world. Koch demonstrated that this was at the center of early apocalyptic/apocalypse awareness, and in the form and genre group’s research, this was indeed discovered to be an important feature of apocalypse, occurring twenty-two times across the Jewish and Christian texts observed. However, it is not something prevalent in texts prior to Revelation. The full-blown judgment/destruction of the world only occurs four times in the “Jewish Apocalypse” texts examined by the group: in the Enochian material and possibly in Apocalypse of Zephaniah (Collins 1979a: 28; 104–05). Rather, it is cosmological upheavals that feature most frequently. However, in post-Revelation texts judgment/destruction of the world becomes a predominant feature occurring in Apocalypse of Peter, Apocalypse of Paul, Apocalypse of Esdras, and Apocalypse of Mary. Considering our neo-noir exploration, it seems apt to compare neo-noir’s presentation of a glamorous femme fatale, which sidelined other fatale portrayals, to Revelation’s foregrounding of the judgment/destruction of the world. By representing a full-blown passing of heaven and earth in Rev. 21:1, Revelation foregrounds an apocalyptic feature, which became integral to apocalyptic/apocalypse perception, and in doing so sidelined other cosmic events portrayed by its forebears.16 Therefore, when scholars began to approach apocalyptic/apocalypse through the lens of Revelation this feature became fixed in generic perception, even though this feature only dominates in texts after Revelation. As saxophone music and a glamorous fatale are to film noir, so is the destruction of the world to apocalyptic/apocalypse.

A different apocalypse The history of the scholarly understanding of apocalypse/apocalyptic centers on Revelation. Revelation is the catalyst for apocalyptic and apocalypse as they are known today, with potential apocalypses being studied due to their similarity to it. But scholars

32

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

have also seen Revelation as distinct, leading to a still raging scholarly debate regarding whether it is or is not an apocalypse. Scholars highlighted Revelation’s distinctive nature through tabulating literary features, such as visions, mediators, narrative conclusion, and pseudonymity. In doing this, they concluded the central generic features were those shared by the greatest number of works, several of which Revelation lacked. However, if these same tables are used to count the number of apocalyptic features each text possesses, Revelation has as many as the most apocalyptic of apocalypses: twenty, a claim only two other apocalypses can make.17 Therefore, Revelation is not lacking apocalyptic features compared to other apocalypses. Rather, the features it has are different.

Conclusion Neo-noir brought about an awareness of what film noir was, and yet was itself not film noir. The prevalence of film noir is now widely accepted, just as the prevalence of apocalyptic/apocalypse is. However, it took neo-noir’s exaggerated, intensified, and selective imitation to bring about this awareness of the distinctive nature of a previous body of films. Film noir became the category to which films such as Strangers on a Train and The Maltese Falcon belonged, their old groupings left behind. Our examination has shown how scholarship has done the same with texts now classed as apocalypse. Their previous categorizations such as prophecy, writings, and so forth have been replaced with this new category apocalypse as they are seen to have distinctive elements in common with a new group of texts. However, for the creation of this new category, scholarship required the lens of Revelation. Its exaggeration, intensification, and highlighting of textual features provided a new viewing perspective to reassess other texts. Yet to sense apocalyptic and move toward categorizing apocalypse, Revelation could not simply reflect other texts. It had to reframe them so their distinctive nature could be seen. Thus, apocalypse/apocalyptic has moved into scholarly consciousness through a distorted view, enhancing the destruction of the world over and against cosmic upheavals, intensifying the reveal/conceal dialectic far above and beyond previous textual tensions, and revealing the composite nature of apocalypses as seemingly important, when in fact this is a feature spread across the Hebrew Bible. Yet it is precisely because Revelation draws attention to features of the past texts through exaggeration/selecting/sidelining/signaling difference that it can never be the same as its referents. If it were the same it would not function as it does: as a text which brings about awareness through providing a new perspective. Just as Body Heat could never be a film noir because it is too sexually explicit, set in the 1980s, and with a femme fatale who wins, so Revelation does not sit comfortably next to other apocalypses. For Revelation to be the instigator of a generic awareness it needed to be a defier. However, this means that whenever the destruction of the world or revealing/concealing are declared key to apocalypse and apocalyptic, it is more than likely because scholarship is forever colored by the neo-apocalypse-noir that is Revelation. While filmic and biblical scholarship may often seem far apart, our exploration has shown how these disciplines can become dynamic interdisciplinary partners. Our



Apocalypse Noir: The Book of Revelation and Genre

33

own awareness of biblical studies can be refocused through the filmic medium and the scholarship surrounding it. Indeed, this chapter has shown that some of our most taxing of scholarly issues can be illuminated when we bring them into the limelight.

Notes 1 This is a modified version of Fletcher (2015), which appears with the kind permission of Mohr Siebeck. It is a shortened version of Fletcher (2017), Chapter 7, appearing here with kind permission of T&T Clark. 2 To argue that film genre and biblical/literary genre are the same is unwise, but as with so many good sounding things deemed unwise, this does not mean we should not pursue the idea. 3 See Smith (1983) and Lampe (1961: 194) for usage, including Herodotus, Plato, LXX, NT, and Clement of Alexandria. 4 See Marc. 3.143; 4.5.2; Haer. 4.14.12; 4.30.4; 5.30.3; 4.35.2; Muratorian Canon 71–72, dated traditionally toward the end of the second century (Aune 1997: 4). 5 Other documents gain similar titles, see, for example, Collins (1998: 3): Cologne Mani Codex “where we read that each one of the forefathers showed his own apokalypsis to his elect, and specific mention is made of apocalypses of Adam, Sethel, Enosh, Shem and Enoch.” 6 Sturm highlights the early grouping of “Apocryphal apocalypses” by J. A. Fabricius in 1713 (1989: 21). 7 For some, Revelation was the paradigm (Morris 1973: 91; Hanson 1976: 21). 8 Shifts in the word’s field of reference do not negate the fact that Revelation acted as the lens that enabled scholarship to first view apocalyptic. 9 The unknown character of noir-ness goes against the idea of a generic contract between readers and authors. 10 Dyer (2007), Naremore (2002), and Jameson’s (1991) arguments that neo-noir films are pastiches are convincing, although not all agree. 11 Some film noir did utilize blinds, for example, Double Indemnity. However, this is something noticeable in particular films, rather than a key noir element. 12 In Detour the saxophone is a “damn” sound that haunts Roberts, and a soprano saxophone features in David Raksin’s soundtrack to The Big Combo (1955). Butler says, “The perception that jazz was a consistent feature of 1940s and 1950s film noir is the result of retrospective illusion functioning on a grand scale: It is the retrospective illusion of not just a single film, but an entire film era” (2002: 166). 13 For Hanson (1975), it is best defined as a sensibility, and Rowland (1982) prefers outlook rather than literary form. 14 This extends to any material presenting heavenly mysteries, for example, prophecy (Collins 1993: 54–55). 15 Collins calls it “a sense of mystery” (1993: 55). 16 Cosmic events are not limited to the apocalypses used by the group (see, for example, Isa. 51:6). 17 This includes asterisked (partial) elements. If those are discounted, Revelation is only matched by three and exceeded by two (Dan. 7–12 and 4 Ezra). Revelation’s lack of features such as narrative conclusion and pseudonymity are central to its nonapocalypse classification. It contains more obscure features, such as a written form of revelation and epiphanies.

34

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Works cited Altman, Rick (1999), Film/Genre, London: BFI. Aune, David E. (1986), “The Apocalypse of John and the Problem of Genre,” in Adela Yarbro Collins (ed.), Early Christian Apocalypticism: Genre and Social Setting, 65–96, Semeia 36, Decatur, GA: Society of Biblical Literature. Aune, David E. (1988), The New Testament and Its Literary Environment, Cambridge: Clarke. Aune, David E. (1997), Revelation 1-5, Word Biblical Commentary 52A, Dallas: Word. Barr, James (2006), “Beyond Genre: The Expectations of Apocalypse,” in David L. Barr (ed.), The Reality of Apocalypse: Rhetoric and Politics in the Book of Revelation, 71–90, SBL Symposium Series 39, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Bauckham, Richard (1993), The Theology of the Book of Revelation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blevins, James L. (1980), “The Genre of Revelation,” Review and Expositor, 77 (3): 393–408. Borde, Raymond, and Étienne Chaumeton (1955), Panorama du film noir américain: 1941–1953, Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. Borde, Raymond, and Étienne Chaumeton (1996), “Twenty Years Later: Film Noir in the 1970s,” in R. Barton Palmer (ed.), Perspectives on Film Noir, 76–80, New York: G. K. Hall. Butler, David (2002), Jazz Noir: Listening to Music from Phantom Lady to The Last Seduction, Westport: Praeger. Collins, Adella Yarbro (2011), “Apocalypse Now: The State of Apocalyptic Studies near the End of the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century,” Harvard Theological Review, 104 (4): 447–57. Collins, John J. (ed.) (1979a), “Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre,” Semeia, 14: 1–217. Collins, John J. (1979b), “Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre,” in J. J. Collins (ed.), Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre, 1–20, Semeia 14, Missoula: Society of Biblical Literature. Collins, John J. (1993), Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, Minneapolis: Fortress. Collins, John J. (1998), The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans. Dyer, Richard (2007), Pastiche, London: Routledge. Erickson, Todd (1996), “Kill Me Again,” in Alain Silver and James Ursini (eds.), Film noir Reader, 307–29, New York: Limelight. Fletcher, Michelle (2015), “Apocalypse Noir: How Revelation Defined and Defied a Genre,” in Garrick V. Allen, Ian Paul, and Simon P. Woodman (eds.), The Book of Revelation: Currents in British Research on the Apocalypse, 115–34, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Fletcher, Michelle (2017), Reading Revelation as Pastiche, London: T&T Clark. Frank, Nino (1946), “Un nouveau genre ‘policier’: L’aventure criminelle,” L’Écran Français, 61: 8–9. Hanson, Paul D. (1975), The Dawn of Apocalyptic, Philadelphia: Fortress. Hanson, Paul D. (1976), “Apocalypse, Genre,” in Keith Crim (ed.), Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: Supplementary Volume, 27–28, Nashville: Abingdon. Higham, Charles, and Joel Greenberg (1968), Hollywood in the Forties, London: Zwemmer. Hilgenfeld, Adolf (1857), Die jüdische Apokalyptik in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung: Ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte des Christenthums, Jena: Mauke.



Apocalypse Noir: The Book of Revelation and Genre

35

Hoesterey, Ingeborg (2001), Pastiche: Cultural Memory in Art, Film, Literature, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Jameson, Frederic (1991), Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham: Duke University Press. Koch, Klaus (1972), The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic: A Polemical Work on a Neglected Area of Biblical Studies and Its Damaging Effects on Theology and Philosophy, Naperville: A. R. Allenson. Koch, Klaus, and J. M. Schmidt (1982), Apokalyptik, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Lampe, G. W. (1961), Patristic Greek Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon. Lücke, Friedrich (1832), Versuch einer vollständigen Einleitung in die Offenbarung Johannis: und in die gesammte apokalyptische Litteratur, Bonn: Bey Eduard Weber. Martin, Richard J. (1999), Mean Streets and Raging Bulls: The Legacy of Film Noir in Contemporary American Cinema, Lanham: Scarecrow. Morris, Leon (1973), Apocalyptic, London: Inter-Varsity. Naremore, James (2002), “Introduction: A Season in Hell or the Snows of Yesteryear,” in Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton (eds.), A Panorama of American Film Noir, 1941–1953, vii–xxi, trans. Paul Hammond, San Francisco: City Lights. Naremore, James (2008), More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts, Berkeley: University of California Press. Prigent, Pierre (2004), Commentary on the Apocalypse of St. John, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Reuss, Eduard (1850), “Johannes Apokalypse,” in Johann Samuel Ersch and J. G. Gruber (eds.) Allgemeine Encyklopadie der Wissenschaften und Kúnste, 27, Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. Rose, Margaret A. (1991), “Post-Modern Pastiche,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 6 (1): 26–38. Rowland, Christopher (1982), The Open Heaven, London: SPCK. Rowley, H. H. (1964), The Relevance of Apocalyptic: A Study of Jewish and Christian Apocalypses from Daniel to the Revelation, New York: Association. Russell, D. S. (1964), The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic, 200 B.C.–A.D. 100, Philadelphia: Westminster. Schmithals, Walter (1975), The Apocalyptic Movement: Introduction and Interpretation, Nashville: Abingdon Press. Silver, Alain, and James Ursini, eds. (1996), Film Noir Reader, 8th Limelight ed., New York: Limelight. Smith, Morton (1983), “On the History of ΑΠΟΚΑΛΥΠΤΩ and ΑΠΟΚΑΛΥΨΙΣ,” in David Hellholm (ed.), Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East: Proceedings of the International Colloquium, Uppsala August 12-17, 1979, 9–20, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Sturm, R. E. (1989), “Defining the Word ‘Apocalyptic’: A Problem in Biblical Criticism,” in Joel Marcus and Marion L. Soards (eds.), Apocalyptic and the New Testament: Essays in Honor of J. Louis Martyn, 17–48, Sheffield: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. von Rad, Gerhard (1965), Theologie des Alten Testaments, 4th ed., Munich: Kaiser.

2

Counting Errors or Understanding Filmic History: Historiophoty and Bible Films Anne Moore

The onscreen credits for Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956) refer to the intensive research conducted for the film, the film’s sources (including novels, Philo, Josephus, Eusebius, the Midrash, and Holy Scripture), and the film’s employment of authoritative consultants (who are listed). DeMille meticulously advertises his concern for historical accuracy and biblical fidelity. Scholars, however, have shown that the film has more historical aura than accuracy (see Wright 1996; Orrison 1999; Louvish 2007). Similar concerns have dominated the academic discussion of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (see Plate 2007).1 In fact, most biblical film analyses tend to be assessments of a film’s deviance from biblical narratives. The underlying assumption is that biblical films should mirror the scriptures and authoritative academic histories. These discussions have counterparts in historians’ debates about history and film, which may provide insights for biblical film scholars. For example, historian Robert Rosenstone advocates deriving “theory from practice” (2012: xviii), studying historical films to ascertain how film creates history, and only then comparing the film’s history with traditional academic histories. He concisely states the assumption, which differs dramatically from that underlying most biblical film conversations, underlying his approach: It took more than a decade of thinking and writing about history film to work my way towards the simple insight that . . . film-makers can be and already are historians (some of them), but of necessity the rules of engagement of their works with the stuff of the past are and must be different from those that govern written history. (2012: 8; Rosenstone’s emphasis)

As the construction of history has been shown to be media specific (see Davis 1987; 2000; White 1988; Rosenstone 1995), cinematic history and (academic) written history inevitably differ. Critical discussion of historical films then should consider how film specifically presents the past and how film engages in “history-making.” In this chapter, I will apply these insights from Rosenstone and others about historical films to biblical films’ historical representation/reconstruction. The process



Counting Errors or Understanding Filmic History

37

will reveal a continuum of historical reconstruction in biblical films reflecting the different film genres in which biblical narrative appears. For brevity’s sake, I will focus on historicity, although this can never be completely divorced from issues of biblical fidelity. My argument has two sections: 1) filmmakers as biblical historians and 2) biblical film genres.

Filmmakers as historians These two quotes encapsulate the debate between academic historians and directors of historical films: The duty of an historian is to give an accurate report of known and proven facts. The duty of an historical dramatist, however, is to fill in the crevasse between them. The absence of legs from both Alexander and his horse Bucephalus in the damaged Pompeian mosaic of the Battle of Issus is no proof that legless men or horses existed. It is for the dramatist to fill in all the missing pieces of the mosaic of history. (Cecil B. DeMille, quoted in Johnson 1955) If the cinema art is going to draw its subjects so generously from history, it owes it to its patrons and its own higher ideals to achieve greater accuracy. No picture of a historical nature ought to be offered to the public until a reputable historian has had a chance to criticize and revise. (University of Chicago Professor Louis Gottschalk writing to the President of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, quoted in Novick 1988: 194)

Scholars and directors both strive to create a window into the historical past. The academic construction emerges through debates between historians about the relevance of particular sources or evidence, the composition and significance of specific events, and the acceptability of documented and footnoted accounts that convey a certain interpretation of the events. Historians create “realistic” and “authoritative” accounts through hundreds of pages of the written word. Due to its authority, academic written history is frequently employed to evaluate and critique history films. By contrast, film directors create their historical interpretations out of images and sound. They “create what may be called ‘cinematic realism’—a realism made up of certain kinds of shots in certain kinds of sequences edited together and underscored by a sound track” (Rosenstone 1995: 54). Film’s visual and aural nature requires detail; the screen must be filled with people dressed in particular costumes, moving through specific landscapes and buildings, using certain objects, and speaking in distinctive tones. In addition, feature films reduce the long span of narrated events to a 90- to 180-minute running time: 1) compressing or condensing (the reduction of several characters and/or events to one or a few; 2) displacing (the movement of an event from one timeframe to another); 3) altering (the assignment of actions, motivations, or expressions associated with one character to another); and 4) creating dialogue (the employment of speech to convey character or to explain events, outcomes, and effects) (Rosenstone 1995: 54–61). Finally, feature history films tend to have four elements. 1) They are typically moral and uplifting narratives. 2) They focus on individuals

38

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

(in terms of known individuals or in providing an individual face to represent the activities or responses of crowds). 3) They present a “unitary, closed, and completed past” (Rosenstone 1995: 57); very few films suggest alternative pasts. 4) Film is an affective medium; it is an emotionalized presentation. By contrast, academics present history as a product of large-scale, often amoral, forces, which may result in either tragedy or success. Due to complex interactions of economics, politics, and various social forces, a sense of completion, closure, or integrated process seldom appears. Further, academics do not present history from an individual perspective. Unfortunately, cinema’s different presentation is often understood as film directors’ desires to create a historical “look” or to reformulate a historical narrative into a “blockbuster,” a process moving from valid, authoritative history to the lower form of entertainment. The implications are that only academic historians have valid history, that film directors are bad students of history, and that their poorly done history should be corrected by academic scholars. However, postmodern historians have shown that academic history-making also involves using narrative formats to give meaning to historical “facts” (see White 1973; 1978; 2014; Ankersmit 2001; Ricoeur 2004). Such historians see the presentation of history/the past as an activity motivated by contemporary concerns; constructed according to specific criteria of selection, analysis, and examination of evidence; and conveying its significance through particular narrative constructions. In short, academic historians, novelists, and screenwriters all engage in the process of historymaking as they choose and analyze data and create or select interpretative narratives for consumption in the present. Such an assumption creates more willingness to consider alternative ways of presenting history, other than the footnoted academic monograph (see also Munslow 2013). Historians are now working alongside film directors as advisers and collaborators in the attempt to understand each other’s discipline (Bell and McGarry 2013). Films, historical fictions, and virtual reconstructions are slowly being incorporated into the teaching of history. Reenactments and experimental archaeology are now accepted means for addressing specific research questions. In sum, a conversation now exists about how film—and other media—“do history” and convey historical information. The realization that both academics and filmmakers do history is so widely accepted that White has coined a new category of study: “what we might call ‘historiophoty’ (the representation of history and our thought about it in visual images and filmic discourse)” (White 1988: 1193). In reference to Bible films, what does historiophoty disclose? I will provide some examples of potential areas of exploration and possible insights. My first illustrations are from George Stevens’s The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), the film that sounded “the death-knell” for the biblical spectacle. In this film, one sees the techniques Rosenstone discusses in terms of history films. There is the rich detail associated with biblical epics and intended to create “reality effects” (see Barthes 1989; Ankersmit 1989). These include the creation of the landscape of Jerusalem, the period fishing boats on the sea of Galilee, the priests’ scrolls, and the clothing’s rough weaving; in other words, the details featured in many “sandal and sand” dramas. Stevens also employs other techniques mentioned by Rosenstone; for example, he condenses the character of the



Counting Errors or Understanding Filmic History

39

rich young man who is not prepared to follow Jesus with the character of Lazarus. The film predominantly follows the narrative of the Gospel of John; however, as in most Jesus films, events are added from other gospels, and the events are displaced and rearranged. Stevens also supplements the biblical narrative with the addition of two events taken from Josephus. Early in the film, he adds the Jewish revolt against the Roman symbols (Ant. 17.155–63) and the massacre by Pilate’s soldiers outside of the Fortress Antonia (War 2.175–77): Stevens does not include these elements for the sake of history alone, but as tools to explain and illustrate the Jesus story. The former incident leads to information about why the first-century Jews anticipated a messiah at all; the latter gives occasion for Jesus’ early followers to “turn the other cheek” against overwhelming odds. (Stern, Jefford, and DeBona 1999: 137)

I suggest, however, that the addition of Josephus’s events also have a role in Stevens’s history-making. As noted by W. Barnes Tatum, the Romans throughout the film are concerned with law and order (1997: 94). The film’s “law and order” Pilate is similar to the cruel, inflexible executioner of troublemakers described by Josephus (War 2.169– 77; Ant. 18.35, 55–64, 87–89) and Philo (Embassy to Gaius 299–305). The film invents a scene with Herod Antipas stressing Pilate’s commitment to Roman order: Herod: Greetings in the name of Augustus Caesar. . . . You may be sure that Caesar will not regret what he has done for the son of his old friend, King Herod. Pilate: Your father kept the people in order. In this you have failed. I must inform you that we take over. Herod: My father’s kingdom was guaranteed by Caesar. Pilate: From now on a Roman legion directed by a Roman governor will govern Judea.

The film further emphasizes Roman authority when it shows the Roman confiscation of the high priest’s vestments. Finally, at Jesus’s trial, Pilate is the only official present. Caiaphas is absent. The scene of Pilate washing his hands is not accompanied with the traditional statement of washing away an innocent man’s blood: “Instead the film offers a voiceover that recites from the Apostle’s Creed: ‘He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried . . .’ . The omissions and voiceover point to Pilate as the major culprit in Jesus’ suffering and death” (Reinhartz 2007: 241). In short, Stevens purposefully constructs a specific historical Pilate (past) rather than following in the footsteps of previous directors and/or adhering to the biblical narratives. Through alternations, inventions, and dialogue, Stevens presents Pilate as Jesus’s judge and executioner; a presentation that conforms to historical evaluations of Pontius Pilate. Stevens’s Pilate does serve specific thematic considerations within the film; however, Stevens engages in history-making to present a particular and consistent portrayal of plausible historical events.

40

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Rosenstone proposes that some film directors theorize about history-making and test new strategies for the presentation of history: “They are, at the same time, part of a search for a new vocabulary in which to render the past on the screen, an effort to make history (depending on the film) more complex, interrogative, and self-conscious, a matter of tough, even unanswerable questions rather than of slick stories” (2012: 20). He classifies such historical films as “oppositional or innovative.” His examples include Sergei Eisenstein’s montage work in Bronenosets Potyomkin (The Battleship Potemkin 1925) and Okytabr (October: Ten Days That Shook the World 1927); the anachronism-laden black comedy Walker (1987); and a series of films by Roberto Rossellini that challenge the assumed drama and emotional elements of historical dramas (e.g., La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV [The Rise of Louis XIV 1966]).2 I would add Atom Egoyan’s Ararat (2002). Through the device of a film within a film, and the presentation of many subjective views of the Armenian genocide, Egoyan raises issues about the ideology behind historical representation and how concerns of the present shape history (Parker 2007). Some biblical films also reflect on the process of historical construction and the complexity inherent in these constructions. For a minor example I will return to Stevens’s The Greatest Story Ever Told. The film begins inside a Byzantine church with a series of focused shots of fresco-like depictions of scenes from Jesus’s life; as the camera moves down from the dome ceiling, the narrator speaks the Gospel of John’s opening lines. We see an image of Jesus (similar to the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro) with the face of Max von Sydow (the actor who plays Jesus in the film); a dissolve then takes us to the nativity scene. At the film’s conclusion, the risen, ascended Jesus commissions his disciples, and a dissolve then takes us back to the frescos and the church. While scholars often reflect on the scene’s theology (see Stern, Jefford, and DeBona 1999: 143–44), I propose that this sequence also reflects on the constructed, ideological nature of Jesus’s story. Most Jesus films present the story in typical historical drama style as if the audience merely opened a window to the past and are now watching events unfold. By contrast, Stevens’s visual inclusio indicates that the screen narrative tells the story of the church’s Christ—the object of worship. This reading is supported by the use of another frame—the four heralds blowing their trumpets at Jesus’s birth and resurrection. The divine is not part of reality; it is encased within church stories. In other words, Stevens hints at the specific purpose for the story’s construction; it is theological history. This does not preclude the possibility of history, as is seen with Pilate’s depiction; however, it is fundamentally a faith story. Another film that may be classified under Rosenstone’s category of innovative films is Denys Arcand’s Jésus de Montréal (1989). Daniel and his group of actors, who perform a passion play within the film, serve as an allegory for Jesus and his disciples; an allegory which transports the biblical story to contemporary Quebec. Their passion play raises issues about the control of the biblical story. Daniel rewrites the passion play, introducing several scenes presenting an alternative Jesus of history: for example, as in the Talmud, Jesus is a Roman soldier’s illegitimate child; he is also a magician like many others. These alternative histories, as Reinhartz argues, are given validity through various well-known documentary devices: the interview with the



Counting Errors or Understanding Filmic History

41

eminent university professor; Daniel’s intensive library research; references to newly discovered texts; the use of technology to decipher ancient manuscripts; and new archaeological discoveries. However, for Reinhartz, these alternative histories of Jesus are not valid history because they do not adhere to the basic standards of historical biblical scholarship: “Not only does Arcand use the ancient sources uncritically, but he virtually ignores the most important sources of all, namely the gospel accounts” (2006: 10). The result is what Reinhartz regards as pseudo-history or anti-history. This pseudo-history produces a story of an ordinary man who lived and died, and it provides no understanding of how or why this ordinary man became a founder of a movement, which later became a world religion. For Reinhartz, this anti-history supports one of the film’s major themes, the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church in Quebec: “Jesus of Montreal breaks the link between scripture and history that is taken for granted by so many other films. In doing so, it forges the image of the church as the institution that has created and perpetuated the story to the detriment of its members” (2006: 13). This does not negate, as Reinhartz states, the power of Christian faith, which is evident in the film when the Haitian audience member embraces Daniel/Jesus during the passion play and in Daniel’s symbolic resurrection through the donation of his organs. Jesus and humanity are connected, but no longer through the church. In this alternative history, I see reflection on significant issues within historical biblical scholarship and the popular reception of history. With historical fictions, history films, documentaries, historical TV series, reality shows that feature reenactments, and the creation of TV channels supposedly devoted to history, there is a “history boom.” History is no longer confined to university departments; there is a socially constructed historical consciousness or history culture that is comprised of the historical presentations found throughout the various media. Audiences are aware of several different interpretations for historical events. In fact, given the media juggernaut that develops around such “finds” as the Jesus Ossuary and the Gospel of Judas, many audience members are more likely to be acquainted with these alternative histories than with those of academically written biblical scholarship. Notably, Arcand employs the documentary techniques, which are part of this history boom, to present his film. I wonder if Arcand, in presenting an alternative history, is making a comment on how history is now being presented in the popular media and how historians, to a certain extent, are participants. On one hand, we may criticize books like The Da Vinci Code for its historical inaccuracies and convoluted theories;3 on the other hand, we academic historians contribute to the debates over the Gospel of Judas or the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife. The result is a popular historical culture that often reflects more misrepresentations and fabrications than history. Arcand’s critique of the popular history culture and/or academic biblical history may extend to another level. In the scenes that discuss the prevalence of magicians and charlatans, René, in a Cirque du Soleil style “flying” acrobatic performance, appears as one of the magicians and Martin appears and disappears in the traditional magical “puff of smoke.” As magicians, they claim they will part the waters of Jordan and cause the walls of Jerusalem to fall; both claims made by prophets recorded in Josephus. This flamboyant scene is contrasted with Jesus’s miracles—walking on calm, shallow water and healing a blind woman using spittle—which appear much less spectacular in

42

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

comparison. In fact, the presentation of the gospel material is intimate, non-dramatic, and relational. The communities of Jesus and Daniel focus on personal interactions; a device even extended to the audience who walk with the actors/disciples. Jesus/Daniel remains mysterious; we learn little about them during the course of the play/movie. The focus is on the changes in Daniel’s followers who transition from voiceover actors for pornography and science programs and from “eye candy” to actors and actresses. The film, however, ends ambiguously. After Daniel’s death, the lawyer/Satan seems to be directing the troupe to create a new theater, but Mireille does not join the rest. For Arcand, the significance is not the historical figure of Daniel/Jesus; it is the figure’s impact on others. In sum, historiophoty does provide a way of viewing and interpreting Bible films; it offers an approach for analyzing some of the significant issues in terms of biblical films’ presentation of history, the interaction between history and the biblical narrative, ideas about the construction of biblical history, and even the nature of questions that guide biblical history. It is a way of gleaning the history-making from the biblical narrative’s overwhelming dominance.

Film genres of the biblical film Bible films and history films are categories constructed by biblical scholars and historians for their own “in-house” use. Bible films refer to movies that use storylines from the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament or New Testament for a film’s plotline. History or historical films are “broadly defined as films that ‘deliberately’ portray historical reality” (Ashkenazi 2014: 291). Film genres are constructions based on similarities of narrative elements, audience response, settings, themes, mood, and/or format. They, too, are made for “in-house” uses, a house that differs from that of biblical and historical critics.4 Bible films have utilized a wide range of film genres so my discussion is not exhaustive; it simply suggests how different film genres influence biblical films’ representation of history. Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) and Godspell (1973) are both musicals and, as musicals, advance character development and plot through various musical numbers; the setting is generally simplistic and designed to support the performances. In other words, the genre does not require the historical setting pivotal to biblical epics. The musical genre also permits a more flexible presentation of biblical narrative; the focus is on the overarching theme. Therefore, scholars typically treat both Jesus musicals as contemporary interpretations of the biblical narrative (Malone 2012: 69–78; Stern, Jefford, and DeBona 1999: 161–96; Tatum 1997: 117–34). Most Bible films, however, are epics. Epics have classical heroes; they are “films with historical, especially ancient world, settings; and large-scale films of all kinds which used new technologies, high production values and special modes of distribution and exhibition” (Neale 2000: 85). The epic draws upon mythical and historical texts; particularly stories from the Bible, Greece, Rome, Egypt, and various Eastern cultures. Consequently, the epic views history on a large scale with a particular focus on the cultural, ethnic, or national hero’s achievements. “History” serves to locate the story



Counting Errors or Understanding Filmic History

43

temporally; it provides the story’s necessary “look,” and it grounds the story in the ancient past. In fact, Ashkenazi suggests the epic is often “mythologies-perceived-ashistory” (2014: 294). Epics produce an affective emotional means for understanding the past and these films’ affective nature supports the gravitas of foundation narratives or origin stories. The Ten Commandments (1956) is a splendid example of the epic. DeMille casts Charlton Heston as a larger-than-life hero who is instrumental in procuring the Israelites’ freedom. Moses is the archetype for national heroes such as El Cid, Richard I, and George Washington. Based on a suggestion made by John Henry Breasted, DeMille selects the reign of Ramesses II for Moses’s encounter with the Egyptian Pharaoh (Ostriker 2003: 142), despite the fact that this adroit leader would have hardly permitted the liberation of several thousand slaves. As Ramesses lived into his nineties, the choice also leaves DeMille with the awkward situation of ensuring Ramesses’s survival after the Red Sea. However, this choice serves the epic theme well. One could have hardly selected a more powerful Egyptian Pharaoh or a more monumental time in Egyptian history. DeMille, through this setting, ensures the audience the experience of this monumental past. This iconic image of Egypt remains so vivid in the collective memory that, despite the fact that most biblical historians do not even attempt to date the Exodus, the reign of Ramesses the Great remains the period of choice for Exodus movies. While the epic declined during the 1960s, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000) marked the epic’s return (Elliott 2014). This return is also a transformation, because the recent use of mythological texts expands the genre to include films such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001, 2002, 2003) or Thor (2011). Recent epics also have a “darker” or “more pessimistic” tone than those from the classic Hollywood era. Peter W. Rose argues that The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) and Gladiator (2000) reveal this shift. These films contain major tensions between empires and the individual (2004: 171–72). The history of the empires is very clear; they are global bureaucracies that test the individual’s ability to comprehend or to find meaning (Jameson 1995: 2–10). It is a theme repeated throughout history, historical fiction, and history film. In earlier epics, the hero was often able to expose the empire or global bureaucracy or provide some way of acquiring meaning. For the biblical epics, the activity of the divine, faith, or the hero’s divinely supported actions provided the answers. However, the biblical epic’s comfortable, closed, transformative ending is inconsistent with contemporary experience. Rose suggests that Gladiator and The Fall of the Roman Empire are successful because they rewrote the epic ending and left the audiences with the reality of “the overwhelming complexity of a worldwide system that escapes the control of individual protagonists” (Rose 2004: 172). The focus is more on the individual’s struggle even when this struggle is not completely successful. This may be a contributing factor to the current shift from epics to biopics among the Bible films. In fact, Reinhartz views many of the Jesus films as biopics (2007: 3–10). The biopic narrates, exhibits and celebrates the life of a subject in order to demonstrate, investigate or question his or her importance in the world;

44

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film to illuminate the fine points of a personality; and for the artist and spectator to discover what it would be like to this person, or to be a certain type of person. . . . Private behaviors and actions and public events as they might have been in the person’s time are formed together and interpreted dramatically. At the heart of the biopic is the urge to dramatize actuality and find in it the filmmaker’s own version of the truth. (Bingham 2010: 10)

The biopic has its own association with history/reality; given the focus on an individual life, the perspective is more on the micro-level, emphasizing personal motivation, character development, and values. History is focused on the family, the community, and everyday life. Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) is a recent biopic; the focus is on Moses “investigating his importance in the world.” The mise-en-scène shifts from the grand monuments of Pharaonic Egypt to the grimy, dirty hovels of the Israelites or simple shepherd homes. The battles are blood-and-guts fights in the dirt as desperate men flay at one another. In fact, the epic’s vast expanse is reduced to small spaces and rooms, to places for personal interactions. Moses’s meeting with and marriage to Zipporah is much more than a simple footnote; the film lingers on the establishment of family. The focus is on Moses’s psychological development and his struggle with his personal loyalties, relationships, and leadership qualities. The divine/supernatural is not introduced until one hour into the film. The burning bush follows Moses’s traumatic accident due to a landslide. It opens up the possibility that Moses’s experience of God is a hallucination. In contrast to previous Exodus films, the divine appears as a young boy, and the dialogues between this boy and Moses are filled with doubt, ambiguity, and misunderstandings.5 The duel between Moses and the Egyptian magicians is eliminated; rather, Egyptian advisers offer the Pharaoh a “rational” account of how the crocodiles ravaged one another turning the Nile to blood and setting off a chain reaction leading to the invasion of the frogs, flies, and boils. The point is that the biopic genre is more “realistic” than the monumental, mythological epic. In sum, different film genres have their own links to history. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016) and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) have the “look” of a history film; however, the “period look” is really the only connection to history. They are hybrid genres with elements of costume dramas, thrillers, and action movies. “History” provides an elaborate background for their stories. By contrast, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012) is committed to reconstructing not only the period’s “look,” but also to relating the conflicted personal, political goals of the major historical figures involved with the ban of slavery. Although reenactments and inventions fill the film, these scenes convey the historical characters and events reasonably. Similarly, the film genres for various biblical films have their own specific links to history that require consideration while evaluating the film in terms of historical accuracy and realism. The shift from epic to biopic occurs in Jesus films as well as in Moses films. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) has received substantial negative criticism; however, most of the criticism assumes that the film is an epic, when The Last Temptation of Christ adheres more to the biopic genre than to the epic; like Exodus: Gods and Kings, it is a film about a man in search of himself.



Counting Errors or Understanding Filmic History

45

Conclusion Cecil B. DeMille famously quipped, “Give me any two pages of the Bible and I’ll give you a picture” (see “Cecil B. DeMille Biography” n. d.). For DeMille, this meant, at times, some spectacular inventions such as the love triangle between Mary Magdalene, Judas, and Jesus that opens The King of Kings (1927). Mary Magdalene the courtesan, while hosting elites from around the ancient world, learns that her lover Judas prefers another’s company. In anger, she departs in her zebra-drawn chariot to “woo” Judas away from Jesus. Instead, Jesus casts out the seven demons that have controlled Mary and she becomes a devoted follower. DeMille was also a master at using archaeology and history to create the ancient world’s glory and wealth. While the creations were not always accurate, they produced a cinematic vision that dominated the epic genre’s visual repertoire. It is relatively easy to list the biblical and historical inaccuracies of these epics; however, as I have argued, this activity merely validates the authority of the Bible and the academic historian. Rather, the historian with her knowledge— about the past’s constructed nature, the employment of interpretative narrative strategies, the imposition of present ideologies upon the presentation of history, the development of a popular history culture, the formation of a collective memory, and various materials used to reconstruct history—can focus on and converse about how films do history-making, reflect on historical representation, and inform the public about history: Historians who tr[y] to list the historical inaccuracies in [a film] would be ignoring the fact that their job should not involve bestowing marks for accuracy, but describing how men living at a certain time understood their own history. An historical film can be puzzling for a scholar: everything that he considers history is ignored: everything he sees on the screen is, in his opinion, pure imagination. But at the same time it is important to examine the difference between history as it is written by the specialist and history as it is received by the non-specialist. (Sorlin 1980: ix)

The above quote distills the change in orientation advocated by Rosenstone and White. They are asking that historians put away their magnifying glasses and limit their search for errors, imprecisions, and anachronisms. Rather, historians, including biblical historians, require an understanding of the camera and an appreciation of the screen events. They need to appreciate the film director as a fellow historian who creates her tales in images and sound and to understand how this visual-aural history contributed to the popular historical culture. As noted by Plate, despite the small publishing industry surrounding Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, most of the analyses provided little insight into why most audiences were so moved by the film and what they found significant (2007: 538–39).6 We unfortunately intellectualized the cinematic experience. However, do we really understand how and why this visual and aural historical presentation works? Do we appreciate that Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ now marks a pivotal event within the history of biblical films?

46

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Notes 1 Critics listed numerous historical inaccuracies in Gibson’s film: the use of Latin when Greek was the lingua franca; the sympathetic portrait of Pontius Pilate; the inclusion of the apocryphal event of Veronica wiping Jesus’s face; and the portrayal of the Jewish leaders. See Corley and Webb (2004), Gracia (2004), Garber (2006), and King (2011). 2 Rosenstone notes that Rossellini, probably the most prolific director of historical films in film history, uses nonactors to haltingly deliver lines, which are far closer in form to lectures than dialogue, and lets the “reality effect” of sumptuous costumes and settings carry the argument for his highly materialist interpretation of the past (2012: 21). 3 As Reinhartz notes of Arcand’s film, “This alternative history may well be credible both to the Passion Play audience on Mount Royal and to many viewers of the film in the movie theater. New Testament scholars and historians of early Christianity, however, are likely to find it highly dubious precisely because of its use, or misuse, of the primary materials” (2006: 10). 4 See the chapter in this book by Fletcher. 5 See the chapter in this book by Walsh. 6 See the chapter in this book by Seesengood.

Works cited Ankersmit, Frank (1989), The Reality of Effect in the Writing of History: The Dynamics of Historiographical Topology, Amsterdam: Noored-Hollandsche: Royal Holland Academy of Arts and Sciences. Ankersmit, Frank (2001), Historical Representation. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ashkenazi, Ofer (2014), “The Future of History as Film: Apropos the Publication of A Companion to Historical Film,” Rethinking History, 18 (2): 289–303. Available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13642529.2013.814289 (accessed February 11, 2017). Barthes, Roland (1989), The Rustle of Language, trans. R. Howard, Berkeley: University of California Press. Bell, Desmond, and Fearghal McGarry (2013), “One Cut Too Many? History and Film: A Practice-Based Case Study,” Journal of Media Practice, 14 (1): 5–23. Available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1386/jmpr.14.1.5_1 (accessed February 11, 2017). Bingham, Dennis (2010), Whose Lives are They Anyway? The Biopic as Contemporary Film Genre, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. “Cecil B. DeMille Biography” (n. d.). Available online: http://www.imdb.com/name/ nm0001124/bio (accessed February 21, 2017). Corley, Kathleen E., and Robert L. Webb, eds. (2004), Jesus and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ: The Film, The Gospels and the Claims of History, London and New York: Continuum. Davis, Natalie Zemon (1987), “Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead: Film and the Challenge of Authenticity,” Yale Review, 76: 461–82. Davis, Natalie Zemon (2000), Slaves on Screen: Film and Historical Vision, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.



Counting Errors or Understanding Filmic History

47

Elliott, Andrew B. R. (2014), “Introduction,” in Andrew B. R. Elliott (ed.), The Return of the Epic Film: Genre, Aesthetics and History in the 21st Century, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Available online: https://www.academia.edu/6622120/The_Return_ of_the_Epic_Film_Genre_History_and_Aesthetics_in_the_21st_Century (accessed February 11, 2017). Garber, Zev, ed. (2006), Mel Gibson’s Passion: The Film, The Controversy and Its Implications, West LaFayette: Purdue University Press. Gracia, Jorge J. E. (2004), Mel Gibson’s Passion and Philosophy, Chicago: Open Court. Jameson, Fredric (1995), The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System, London: BFI. Johnson, Albert (1955), “The Tenth Muse in San Francisco,” Sight and Sound, 24: 154–56. King, Neal (2011), The Passion of the Christ, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Louvish, Simon (2007), Cecil B. DeMille and the Golden Calf, London: Faber and Faber. Malone, Peter (2012), Screen Jesus: Portrayals of Christ in Television and Film, Plymouth: Scarecrow. Munslow, Alun (2013), Authoring the Past: Writing and Rethinking History, New York: Routledge. Neale, Stephen (2000), Genre and Hollywood, New York: Routledge. Novick, Peter (1988), That Noble Dream: That Objectivity Question and the American Historical Profession, Cambridge; Cambridge University Press. Orrison, Katherine (1999), Written in Stone: Making Cecil B. DeMille’s Epic: The Ten Commandments, Lanham: Vestal. Ostriker, Alicia (2003), “Whither Exodus: Movies as Midrash,” Michigan Quarterly Review, 42 (1). Available online: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=m qr;c=mqr;c=mqrarchive;idno=act2080.0042.118;rgn=main;view=text;xc=1;g=mqrg (accessed February 11, 2017). Parker, Mark (2007), “Something to Declare: History in Atom Egoyan’s Ararat,” University of Toronto Quarterly, 76: 1040–54. Available online: https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/250195511_Something_to_Declare_History_in_Atom_Egoyan's_Ararat (accessed February 11, 2017). Plate, S. Brent (2007), “Review of Jesus and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ: The Film, The Gospels and the Claims of History,” edited by Kathleen Corley and Robert Webb, Christianity and Literature, 56: 535–39. Reinhartz, Adele (2006), “History and Pseudo-History in the Jesus Film Genre,” Biblical Interpretation, 14 (1): 1–17. Reinhartz, Adele (2007), Jesus of Hollywood, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ricoeur, Paul (2004), Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Rose, Peter W. (2004), “The Politics of Gladiator,” in Martin M. Winkler (ed.), Gladiator: Film and History, 150–72, Oxford: Blackwell. Rosenstone, Robert A. (1995), Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History, Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press. Rosenstone, Robert A. (2012), History on Film: Film on History, 2nd ed., Harlow, England. Sorlin, Pierre (1980), The Film in History: Restaging the Past, Oxford: Blackwell. Stern, Richard C., Clayton N. Jefford, and Guerric Debona (1999), Savior on the Silver Screen, New York: Paulist. Tatum, W. Barnes (1997), Jesus at the Movies: A Guide for the First Hundred Years, Santa Rosa: Poleridge. White, Hayden (1973), Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in the Nineteenth-Century Europe, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

48

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

White, Hayden (1978), Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. White, Hayden (1988), “Historiography and Historiophoty,” American Historical Review, 93: 1193–99. White, Hayden (2014), The Practical Past, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Wright, Melanie (1996), “Moses at the Movies: Ninety Years of Bible and Film,” Modern Believing, 37: 46–54.

3

In the Creator’s Image: Divine and Mundane Self-Reproduction in Science-Fiction Films1 Christopher Heard

Genesis famously begins at “the beginning,” narrating in two distinct accounts the creation of the cosmos and humanity.2 The Hexameron (Gen. 1:1–2:3)3 climaxes with the creation of humanity, accomplished by divine fiat without the earth and sea as intermediaries (compare Gen. 1:26-27 to 1:11-12, 20-21, 24-25). While the deity blesses all living things to “be fruitful and multiply,” only humanity bears “the divine image,” reflecting the deity’s cosmic reign with subsidiary authority (1:26, 28) over the other terrestrial creatures. The Eden story (Gen. 2:4–3:24) places the first humans in a private divine/royal orchard that has two trees whose fruit has miraculous properties— one grants godlike knowledge, the other godlike lifespan (immortality). In depicting the relationship between humanity and divinity, creator and created, the Hexameron and the Eden story raise abiding questions about human origins, capacities, and limits, not to mention questions about creative power itself—themes that resonate powerfully in science-fiction (SF) films.

Nonhuman creator(s), human creatures In modern times, the theory of evolution provides a credible, compelling scientific account of biological diversification on earth, both for those who reject a supernatural creator altogether (e.g., Dennett 1995) and for many who see it as illuminating a divine creator’s proximate creative mechanisms (e.g., Miller 1999). But evolutionary theory does not explain abiogenesis, the origin of life as such. While many scientists have sought that answer in terrestrial chemistry, others have looked to the stars. Already in the nineteenth century, some scientists speculated that the earliest forms of plant life on earth arrived via a meteor. No less a luminary than William Thompson, Lord Kelvin labeled this view “not unscientific,” but he nevertheless affirmed “overwhelmingly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design .  .  . teaching us that all living beings depend on one ever-acting Creator and Ruler” (Thompson 1871: 269–70). By the twentieth century, the interstellar hitchhikers had become microbes rather than “seeds,” and the whole model had gained the technical name “panspermia.” A hundred

50

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

years later, Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel floated the idea of “directed panspermia,” the intentional seeding of planets by advanced intelligent species (1973; compare Hoyle 1982). Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (2012), functionally the first film in a reenvisioning of the franchise that began with Scott’s Alien (1979), makes directed panspermia a key plot point. Discovery of matching cave paintings in locations around the world convince archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) that alien “Engineers” seeded life on earth, or at least human life. A similar premise animates the sixth-season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Chase” (1993). The Enterprise crew is drawn into an expedition seeking a primordial “computer program composed of DNA fragments.”4 Once reassembled, the “program” reveals a message from a “Humanoid Progenitor” (Salome Jens). The Progenitor claims that “life evolved on [her] planet before all others in this part of the galaxy” and that her species “seeded the primordial oceans of many worlds where life was in its infancy” to leave something of themselves behind. “The seed codes directed your evolution toward a physical form resembling ours.” This premise— in which terrestrial abiogenesis remains unexplained but evolution is directed by intelligent beings—offers a diegetic explanation for the physical resemblance between Humans, Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans, and other humanoid species of the Star Trek universe (the real-world reason being the need for human actors to portray aliens). Brian de Palma’s Mission to Mars (2000) also pivots on alien messages encoded in human DNA. A mysterious noise from a large crystalline structure on the Martian surface—resembling a humanoid face when viewed from above—turns out to represent an incomplete DNA double helix. Exploring the face-mountain, astronauts Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise), Luke Graham (Don Cheadle), and their colleagues ultimately contact a Martian who reveals that a meteorite impact triggered an ecological disaster on Mars, converting the once-verdant world into the “red planet” familiar to human observers. As the Martians fled, they seeded earth with their DNA. Graham attributes the Cambrian explosion to this event, and McConnell draws the obvious conclusion: “They seeded Earth. They’re us. We’re them.” Other films go beyond “seeding” to more direct alien tampering with human genetics. The big reveal in Mission to Mars will not surprise viewers who remember Quatermass and the Pit (1967).5 When construction on the London Underground uncovers a metallic object initially misidentified as a bomb from the Second World War, Professor Bernard Quatermass (Andrew Keir) soon becomes involved. The object turns out to be a spacecraft housing long-dead aliens resembling two-foot-long locusts. Quatermass hypothesizes that the insects were Martians who, knowing that Mars was doomed by impending climatic changes but unable to endure earth’s atmosphere, undertook a kind of colonization by proxy. On this account, the Martian insects took “a type of Pliocene ape” to Mars, “altered [them], by selective breeding, atomic surgery, methods we can’t guess,” and then “brought [them] back for release on Earth . . . with new faculties instilled in them, high intelligence, perhaps something else.” Upon this revelation, the minister of defense (Edwin Richfield) is horrified by the implication that “we owe our human condition here to the intervention of insects.”



In the Creator’s Image

51

Such films proffer rationalistic alternatives to both the biblical creation stories and the neo-Darwinian synthesis, providing “new grounds of plausibility for transcendence that a modern Western audience could relate to and accept” (Panshin and Panshin 1989: 18). Star Trek’s “The Chase,” Mission to Mars, and Prometheus offer the more expansive vision, with the DNA of extraterrestrial humanoids guiding terrestrial evolution. Quatermass and the Pit narrows the scope of alien intervention, allowing ordinary terrestrial evolution to proceed until it produces a “Pliocene ape” and then introducing changes into the target hominid’s genome. The function of alien seeding as a kind of materialist origin myth is highlighted by the striking similarity between the seeding montage in Mission to Mars and the biblical creation story as retold in both the first episode of The Bible (2013) and in Noah (2014). Viewers may justly wonder why a materialist origin myth should need an intelligent designer at all, beyond the mere fact that modern science has not yet solved the puzzle of abiogenesis. Deborah Kelemen’s research implies an innate human bias toward agent-driven explanations of origins (Kelemen 2004; Kelemen and DiYanni 2005). The films discussed here reflect and indulge that bias, scratching an itch that viewers themselves may not even recognize. Yet crediting advanced aliens instead of a deity with creating or manipulating terrestrial life seems to spawn a dilemma that only Prometheus explicitly acknowledges. Once Shaw has confirmed that the Engineers’ DNA both resembles and predates human DNA, Holloway encourages Shaw to remove her cross pendant. His rationale is that since “they made us,” it logically follows that God did not. Shaw rejoins by asking who made them, and Holloway admits, “We’ll never know. But here’s what we do know. There is nothing special about the creation of life. Anybody can do it. All you need is a dash of DNA and half a brain, right?”6 The aporia in Holloway’s argument, of course, is the question of how one gets to that first “dash of DNA” to begin the chain of “engineering,” never mind the “half a brain” required to use it. Like Prometheus, Mission to Mars and Quatermass and the Pit give the creative aliens specific planetary origins (on Mars instead of LV-223), but do not explain how life originated there. All three films simply push the question of origins back one step, one planet, without cutting the Gordian knot. They add to a chain of regress without explaining why any life exists at all, anywhere (compare Dennett 1995: 314–15 on panspermia). Similarly, in “The Chase,” the Enterprise crew and their alien counterparts seem never to ask why, if evolution could produce humanoids on a planet long ago and far away, it could not independently produce similar beings on earth, Qo’noS, Cardassia, and Romulus without the Progenitors’ assistance. Either a supernatural first efficient cause or spontaneous abiogenesis seems more diegetically satisfying than thoroughly natural aliens of unspecified origin who bequeath existence to the younger life-forms of planet earth. Either of these could at least arrest the otherwise potentially infinite regress of ever more ancient intelligent designers. Similarly, most of these films reflect and indulge the teleological bias that Keleman and her associates have identified both in children (Keleman 1995; Keleman 2004) and professional physical scientists (Kelemen, Rottman, and Seston 2013). Both the Hexameron and the Eden story give humanity a caretaking role with respect to the rest of creation, on a spectrum from supervisory (Hexameron) to custodial (Eden). These roles fit the metaphor of the deity as cosmic king, operative in both stories. While one

52

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

could imagine a SF scenario in which ancient alien explorers lay a claim to earth and engineer organic beings (us) to tend and keep the place, this is not a common trend. Quatermass and the Pit, “The Chase,” and Mission to Mars give humanity a more prosaic telos as aliens’ last-ditch attempt to “be fruitful and multiply” when facing extinction. A certain pathos, or pitifulness, attends these portrayals. Star Trek’s Progenitor labels the Alpha Quadrant humanoid species “a monument, not to our greatness, but to our existence.” At least the Progenitor and the Martians in Mission to Mars managed to guide terrestrial evolution toward humanoids. The less fortunate insectoid Martians of Quatermass and the Pit had to settle for making primates smarter, an outcome Quatermass himself weakly assesses as “better than leaving nothing at all behind.” Holloway’s explanation to David in Prometheus is even more disappointing: “We made you . . . because we could.”

Human creators, mechanical creatures Like the biblical deity (Gen. 1:26-27), the Progenitors of Star Trek, the Martians of Mission to Mars, and the Engineers of Prometheus shape humanity “in their image.” But like the biblical Adam (Gen. 5:3), these alien interlopers must settle for the blandest sense of this phrase: physical resemblance. Indeed, in “The Chase” and Mission to Mars, this physical resemblance is precisely the point. Theological interpretations of Gen. 1:26-27 tend to eschew simple physical resemblance—or any physical resemblance to an incorporeal deity—as the key feature by which human beings exercise “the image of God.” Interpreters have instead sought a metaphysical or functional correspondence between the deity and humanity. Middleton finds this connection especially in the exercise of creativity, as the divine creator “shar[es] power with a variety of creatures (especially humanity), inviting them (and trusting them—at some risk) to participate in the creative (and historical) process” (2005: 296–97). If human creative power reflects the divine image, the pinnacle of godlike creativity would be (re)creating life in humanity’s image. So says Professor Hobby (William Hurt) in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001), who claims that “to create an artificial being has been the dream of man’s since the birth of science.” Some SF protagonists think that humanity could thus displace divinity. For example, in Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R. (1920)—the title an initialism for “Rossum’s Universal Robots”7—Rossum creates his robots in part “to prove that God was no longer necessary” (Čapek 1923: 741). Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein (1818), often hailed as the first SF protagonist (so Aldiss 1973: 20–31; compare Panshin and Panshin 1989: 19–31; Hrotic 2014: 43–45, but see the contrary view in Roberts 2006: 21–95), immediately comes to mind, but the transformation of animals into near-humans by H. G. Wells’s Dr. Moreau better exemplifies this theme. In The Island of Lost Souls (1933)—the earliest “talkie” adaptation of The Island of Dr. Moreau ([1896] 1996)—the misguided scientist (Charles Laughton) claims to accelerate evolution, misunderstood here to move with inexorable teleology toward humanity regardless of the progenitor species. His stepwise successes, though imperfect, make him “feel like God.” Indeed, Moreau takes steps to ensure that the beast folk treat him as such. Imitating the biblical deity at Sinai, Moreau hands



In the Creator’s Image

53

down laws to his beast folk, teaching the Sayer of the Law (Bela Lugosi) to intone, “His is the hand that made. His is the hand that heals. His is the House of Pain” (the laboratory where Moreau performs his experiments). In the later The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), Moreau (Marlon Brando) dresses in an outfit reminiscent of papal vestments when he goes out among the beast folk. While Frankenstein sought to reanimate a patchwork human and Moreau sought to artificially evolve beasts into humans, SF films have more commonly featured mechanical creations designed to resemble and even replace humans. Čapek introduced the word “robot” in R.U.R.; his “robots” were synthetic humans, akin to genetically engineered clones, but the term was soon associated with mechanical automatons (Panshin and Panshin 1989: 161). In real life, most robots are not humanoid. Rather, form follows function, and to date the most common applications have been manufacturing and space exploration. In fact, designing robots with arms that exhibit humanlike grasping abilities and legs that permit humanlike locomotion remains cutting edge. In film, the Star Wars franchise prominently features non-humanoid robots, most famously R2-D2. But R2-D2 himself exhibits humanoid characteristics like an erect posture and bilateral symmetry, and even the GNK power droid (essentially a mobile battery) walks upright on two legs. Much the same goes for V.I.N.C.E.N.T. in The Black Hole (1979). Although V.I.N.C.E.N.T. resembles a flying beach ball, he has a cylindrical head festooned with two large eyes, and extendable arms and legs approximating humanoid bilateral symmetry. Most science-fiction robots, however, lie on a spectrum from imitating a humanoid body plan to perfectly imitating the human form. Although Robby the Robot (performed by Frank Darro, voiced by Marvin Miller) from Forbidden Planet (1956) sports a mechanical face, it nevertheless has a large recognizable “mouth” and strongly evokes human facial features. The Robby suit appeared in numerous other films and television shows, and inspired other iconic robots such as Lost in Space’s Robot B-9 (1965–68). In the Star Wars franchise, R2-D2 is often found in the company of C-3PO (Anthony Daniels), a humanoid robot whose specialty is “human-cyborg relations” and who translates R2-D2’s chirps and whirrs both for viewers and for organic characters onscreen. Like C-3PO, Sonny (Alan Tudyk) and the other robots in I, Robot (2004) have humanoid body plans and facial features, but are obviously robotic, with much metal and circuitry immediately evident—except that the NS-5 series, to which Sonny belongs, are capable of a wide range of facial expressions, unlike C-3PO or the older models in I, Robot. Even alien robots, like Klaatu’s robot companion Gort (Lock Martin) in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), are usually humanoid, like their alien creators. Until quite recently, filmmakers have largely had to rely on either stop-motion animation or costumed human actors to bring onscreen robots to life. In the original Star Wars trilogy (1977, 1980, 1983) and some scenes from the prequel trilogy (1999, 2003, 2005), even R2-D2 was played by an actor (Kenny Baker) in a suit. Yet the advance of CGI technologies has not increased the frequency of non-humanoid robots. The titular robot in Chappie (2015) is strikingly humanoid, but completely CGI both in appearance and in movement. Even the Autobots and Decepticons of Transformers (2007) and the associated franchise commonly assume humanoid form. Whether due

54

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

to practical exigencies, the cultural influence of Gen. 1:26-27, or some combination of these and other factors, SF roboticists seem inexorably drawn toward reproducing the human form. And the more humanlike the better, it seems. The earliest SF film to foreground a robot character, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), positioned the creation of a robot indistinguishable from a human as robotics’ ultimate achievement, and since then SF has scarcely wavered from this conceit. Sometime prior to the film’s beginning, Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) has invented a robot that bears a vague, stylized resemblance to his lost love. Disturbances in Metropolis’s highly stratified society lead Rotwang to transform the robot into a duplicate of Maria (Brigitte Helm), with spectacularly effective results. Pseudo-Maria passes for a human until Freder Fredersen (Gustav Frölich) finds her actions—not her appearance—so out of keeping with the real Maria that he concludes she must be an impostor. Since Metropolis, SF has tended to distinguish obviously mechanical “robots” from “androids” largely indistinguishable from humans (Panshin and Panshin 1989: 161; Dinello 2005: 7–8; Stableford 2006: 22). Rarely, if ever, do SF protagonists create androids for the androids’ own benefit. In Prometheus, the synthetic David explains the very choice of a humanoid form as a device to make humans more comfortable, but the benefits humans derive from science-fiction robots and androids goes well beyond the psychological. The “robots” of R.U.R. were created as a slave class; indeed, the very term “robot” derives from Czech robota, meaning “forced labor” (Perkowitz 2007: 157). The Stepford Wives (1975) presents compliant feminine androids that the men of Stepford, Connecticut, have substituted for more independently minded human women. Likewise, the androids of Westworld (1973; compare the 2016 serial reenvisioning) bring human visitors’ fantasies (mostly sexual or violent) to a semblance of life, and the replicants of Blade Runner (1982), closer to the organic robots of R.U.R., were designed to be exploited, either as expendable laborers or as sexual playthings (Burnette-Bletsch 2013: 44). In this respect, humans who create androids “in their own image” bear less resemblance to the Hexameron’s deity, who invests humans with a measure of divine authority, than to the Eden story’s cosmic king, who creates humans to tend his private orchard. An even stronger resemblance, though, obtains between slave-class androids and the humans of Mesopotamian myth, created in Enuma elish and Atraḫasis to relieve the gods of burdensome work. Most SF films depict the physical replication of a human form as a relatively trivial engineering or design problem. The real difficulty lies not in getting androids to look human, but to act human—and beyond that, to think and feel like a human. Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac), a reclusive programmer of a monopolistic internet search engine, takes up that challenge in Ex Machina (2015). Bateman recruits Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) to help test his robot Ava (Alicia Vikander) for artificial intelligence. When first introducing Caleb to the task, Nathan tells him, “If that test is passed, you are dead center of the greatest scientific event in the history of man,” to which Caleb replies, “If you’ve created a conscious machine, it’s not the history of man. That’s the history of gods.” Apotheosis clearly appeals to Nathan, as he massages Caleb’s enthusiasm to later claim that “if I’ve created a machine with consciousness, I’m not a man, I’m God.” Nathan has created Ava and her predecessors out of scientific ambition,



In the Creator’s Image

55

and perhaps profit motive. He cares nothing for Ava beyond demonstrating his own godlike creative proficiency. Similarly, A.I. raises questions both explicitly and implicitly about the typical treatment of androids by their human creators. According to the film’s opening voiceover, in a world devastated by catastrophes wrought by climate change, “robots, who were never hungry and who did not consume resources beyond those of their first manufacture, [became] so essential an economic link in the chainmail of society.” In the speech Professor Hobby gives immediately thereafter, he boasts that “at Cybertronics of New Jersey, the artificial being has reached its highest form, universally adopted mecha, the basis for hundreds of models serving the human race in all the multiplicity of daily life.” “Mecha” (mechanical beings) are outwardly indistinguishable from “orga” (organic beings). But Hobby is not satisfied with mechanical servitude, and proposes “that we build a robot who can love.” He quickly clarifies that he wants to go beyond the “sensuality simulators” built into sexual service robots like Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), and instead proposes “that we build a robot child who can love, a robot child that will genuinely love the parent or parents it imprints on with a love that will never end.” An unnamed black woman (portrayed by April Grace), designated “female colleague” in the credits, asks, “But isn’t the real conundrum, can you get a human to love them back?” When Hobby replies with market analysis, his colleague responds, “But you haven’t answered my question. If a robot could genuinely love a person, what responsibility does that person hold toward that mecha in return? It’s a moral question, isn’t it?” Hobby dismisses her concerns with questionable theology: “The oldest [moral question] of all. But in the beginning, didn’t God create Adam to love Him?” A.I. ends without resolving these issues.

Human creators, human creatures The drawback to artificial intelligence is precisely its artificiality. Unlike Pinocchio, A.I.’s David remains mecha, never orga. The human ability to create in one’s own image reaches its apex, for SF films at least, in human cloning. The Sixth Day (2000) explores these issues with explicit reference to this chain of image-reproducing creation. The film’s title sequence begins with an epigraph excerpted from Gen. 1:26-31 and informs viewers that in the film’s story world, human cloning is banned in the United States by “Sixth Day Laws.” The flouting of those laws by unscrupulous business mogul Michael Drucker (Tony Goldwyn) includes the involuntary cloning of Adam Gibson (Arnold Schwarzenegger)—his name an obvious nod to the biblical Adam. In a typical SF departure from real-world cloning, Drucker’s clones can become identical copies of existing people, complete with memory transfer, in just a few hours. The two Adams’ efforts to unravel Drucker’s machinations lead to a brief yet significant theological debate. Drucker claims to serve a “higher purpose,” positing that due to cloning, “We won’t have to lose our best people. We won’t have to lose our Mozarts. We won’t have to lose our Martin Luther Kings. We’ll be able to conquer death. We will finally be able to conquer death.” When Adam proposes that God, not Drucker, should “decide who lives and who dies,” Drucker counters, “If you believe that God created man in his own

56

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

image, then you also believe that God gave man the power to understand evolution. To exploit science. To manipulate the genetic code. To do exactly what I’m doing. I’m just taking over where God left off.” In Jurassic Park (1993), Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) scolds John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could [clone dinosaurs]. They didn’t stop to think if they should.” Drucker’s speech intertextually rebuts Malcolm’s concerns with theology, asserting (for Adam’s sake, not his own) that the divine image authorizes practically any scientific endeavor. Although Drucker invokes the Hexameron, his logic draws viewers back to the tension between the Hexameron and the Eden story. The Hexameron emphasizes humanity’s godlikeness—as does Drucker—regarding this resemblance as necessary for humanity’s vocation. The Eden story emphasizes humanity’s resemblance to other terrestrial creatures, denying humans two key divine characteristics: knowledge and immortality. For Drucker, the divine image confers godlike knowledge and godlike authority to use that knowledge to humanity’s benefit—but the divine image manifestly does not confer immortality. Transposed into the Eden story’s imagery, Drucker argues for using the benefits of the tree of knowledge to render moot the inaccessibility of the tree of life. By exercising the cognitive dimension of the divine image, Drucker reasons, humanity can supply the longevity the deity first omitted and then actively blocked in the Eden story. Drucker’s clones originate as “blanks” that later receive specific individuals’ characteristics and memories, normally after the donor human has died. Drucker’s clients thus achieve a kind of immortality, and the film basically treats a clone produced in this way as the same person as the DNA donor. In The Island (2005), clones called “agnates” provide their donors with an extended lifespan in a different way, as organ donors. The clients who pay Dr. Bernard Merrick (Sean Bean) for these services refer to the agnates as their “insurance policies.” Merrick himself calls them “products,” conceptually dehumanizing the agnates to justify their deaths as benefits to their biologically identical donors. Merrick declares, “I have discovered the Holy Grail of science. I give life. . . . The possibilities are endless here. In two years’ time, I will be able to cure children’s leukemia. How many people on Earth can say that, Mr. Laurent?” The answer Laurent (Djimon Hounsou) gives highlights Merrick’s pretensions: “I guess just you and God. That’s the answer you’re looking for, isn’t it?” Perversely, Merrick finds his own godlikeness not in the cloning of humans, but in cannibalizing them for spare parts—in effect reversing Victor Frankenstein’s procedure of reassembling the body parts of corpses to recreate a living human.

Mirror images? Sidney Perkowitz characterizes Merrick’s (The Island), Drucker’s (The Sixth Day), and Moreau’s (Island of Lost Souls) drive to create human life as a “God virus” (2007: 181); the same diagnosis applies to Bateman (Ex Machina), Hobby (A.I.), Rotwang (Metropolis), and many other science-fiction characters. Perkowitz’s metaphor of the creative impulse as diseased seems particularly apt for these characters. In the



In the Creator’s Image

57

Hexameron, the deity creates humans for an exalted position among other creatures; in the Eden story, newly created humans have a somewhat lower status, but at least share in the fruits of their labor (literally, by eating from the garden’s trees). Neither version approaches anything like the exploitation of clones in The Island or The Sixth Day, of synthetic humans in Blade Runner, of mecha in A.I., of robots in I, Robot, or even of Dr. Moreau’s beast folk. Human creation of robots, mecha, androids, synthezoids, and clones may give SF characters a sense of godlike creativity, but the films depict that resemblance as extending only to know-how and technical competence, not to moral excellence. Even Hobby has it wrong; the biblical deity did not create humanity to love the deity, but to work alongside the deity, with a subordinate authority, for the betterment of the earth (or at least a small part thereof). Films like these implicitly posit something inherently self-serving about the human quest to create life in ways atypical for our species. Meanwhile, other films project these motives onto imagined extraterrestrial but non-supernatural creators of humanity, insofar as Star Trek’s Progenitors and the Martians of Quatermass and the Pit and Mission to Mars act out of a desire for selfpreservation, even in a modified form (barely even recognizable for Quatermass’s insectoid Martians). Prometheus’s Engineers sit at the nadir of this trend, apparently creating humans out of mere experimentation.8 While SF films present technological and biological wonders such as androids and clones, they may also provide a different, and more negative, kind of wondering. When we humans create in our own image, must we always do so to exploit our creations for our own advantage, never for the benefit of the creatures themselves? Can we even conceive of non-supernatural creators who would create out of beneficence rather than self-preservation? To be sure, certain narrative tropes and standard roles might become unavailable in such a scenario, but the dearth of such creators in SF films bespeaks an ironic lack of imagination for a genre that thrives on the speculative—or perhaps a deep-seated pessimism about humanity’s capacity for altruism in its exercise of creative power.9

Notes 1 Many thanks are due to Craig Detweiler, David Green, Stephen Parmelee, and especially Jacob Michael for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. 2 Walton (2011) argues that the author(s) of Genesis 1 did not intend to narrate the material origins of the cosmos, but rather the functional origins of its constituent parts and inhabitants. This compelling view has not spread widely into mainstream, nonspecialist understandings of Genesis 1, and in consequence has had no discernible effect on science-fiction films with ties to the biblical creation stories. 3 Many scholars extend the Hexameron through Gen. 2:4a, the first appearance of the toledot formula that recurs throughout Genesis. However, all other instances of the toledot formula seem to be placed at the beginnings of the textual segments they label. The reversal of the sequence heavens-earth in 2:4a to earth-heavens in 2:4b could be read as either signaling a break between 2:4a and 2:4b or chiastically binding the heading to the narrative it labels. At any rate, the precise dividing line between the two stories is not critical for the purposes of this chapter.

58

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

4 Quotations from TV and film are the author’s transcription unless cited otherwise. 5 Quatermass and the Pit was retitled Five Million Years to Earth for its US release. The feature was an abridged remake of a six-part BBC serial (1958–59). 6 Jon Spaihts’s original script (n.d.) made this exchange more explicitly religious: Holloway tells Shaw, “Ninety percent of the people on our planet believe some . . . magical man in the sky put them there. . . . What do I want to change? I want to change their minds.” The script specifies that Shaw is “one of those people.” Yet, when Holloway insists, “They’re not gods, Shaw,” Shaw replies, “They’re the closest thing we’ve got,” a position seemingly at odds with the script’s notation about Shaw’s own views. An earlier scene has the crew’s geologist, Millburn (Rafe Spall), pressing Shaw and Holloway for evidence of their Engineer hypothesis. Shaw admits that she has none (yet); in Spaihts’s script, but not in the theatrical cut, she admits, “It’s what I choose to believe.” 7 In the original Czech version, R.U.R. stands for “Rossumovi Univerzáini Roboti.” ­Happily, the initialism also works in English. 8 So the original script by Spaihts (n.d.): “We were just an experiment and Earth was their damned petri dish.” This line does not appear in the theatrical film, where the Engineers’ motives remain opaque. 9 The tense relationship between humanity and its image-bearing creations seen in these films cries out for analysis in terms of Rene Girard’s concept of the “monstrous double” (Girard 1977), but such analysis lies beyond the scope of this chapter.

Works cited Aldiss, Brian W. (1973), Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction, New York: Doubleday. Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda (2013), “Blade Runner,” in Adele Reinhartz (ed.), Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films, 39–45, London: Routledge. Čapek, Karel (1923), “R.U.R.,” in Bennett A. Cerf and Van H. Cartmell (compilers), Sixteen Famous European Plays, 737–88, New York: Modern Library. Crick, Francis H. C., and Leslie E. Orgel (1973), “Directed Panspermia,” Icarus, 19 (3): 341–46. Dennett, Daniel (1995), Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, New York: Simon and Schuster. Dinello, Daniel (2005), Technophobia!: Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology, Austin: University of Texas Press. Girard, Rene (1977), Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Hoyle, Fred (1982), Evolution from Space: The Omni Lecture Delivered at the Royal Institution, London on 12 January 1982, Cardiff: University of Cardiff Press. Hrotic, Steven (2014), Religion in Science Fiction: The Evolution of an Idea and the Extinction of a Genre, London: Bloomsbury. Kelemen, Deborah (1995), “Why Are Rocks Pointy?: Children’s Preference for Teleological Explanations of the Natural World,” Developmental Psychology, 35: 1440–53. Kelemen, Deborah (2004), “Are Children ‘Intuitive Theists’? Reasoning about Purpose and Design in Nature,” Psychological Science, 15 (5): 295–301. Kelemen, Deborah, and Cara DiYanni (2005), “Intuitions about Origins: Purpose and Intelligent Design in Children’s Reasoning about Nature,” Journal of Cognition and Development, 6 (1): 3–31.



In the Creator’s Image

59

Kelemen, Deborah, Joshua Rottman, and Rebecca Seston (2013), “Professional Physical Scientists Display Tenacious Teleological Tendencies: Purpose-Based Reasoning as a Cognitive Default,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142 (4): 1074–83. Middleton, J. Richard (2005), The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1, Grand Rapids: Brazos. Miller, Kenneth B. (1999), Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution, New York: Harper. Panshin, Alexei, and Cory Panshin (1989), The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence, Los Angeles: Tarcher. Perkowitz, Sidney (2007), Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, and the End of the World, New York: Columbia University Press. Roberts, Adam (2006), The History of Science Fiction, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Shelley, Mary (1818), Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus, London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones. Spaihts, Jon (n.d.), Alien: Engineers. Available online: http://www.joblo.com/scripts/ Alien-Engineers-ORIGINAL-PROMETHEUS-SCRIPT.pdf (accessed March 14, 2017). Stableford, Brian M. (2006), Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia, New York: Routledge. Thompson, William (Lord Kelvin) (1871), “The British Association Meeting at Edinburgh,” Nature, 4: 261–78. Walton, John H. (2011), Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Wells, H. G. ([1896] 1996), The Island of Dr. Moreau, New York: Dover.

4

Murderous Archaeologists, Doubting Priests, and Mesopotamian Demons: The Bible in Horror and Adventure Cinema Kevin M. McGeough

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) is a story of archaeologists racing to find a biblical-era artifact to use as a powerful weapon. A government agent describes the film’s hero Indiana Jones as a “professional archaeologist, expert on the occult, and, how does one say it, obtainer of rare antiquities.” Indy is a scholarly expert on the ancient world’s material culture, history, and languages. Yet he is also well versed in the secret mysteries of that ancient world that can still endanger the present. Indy is typical of cinematic scholars; the archaeologist in movies is not just an expert on and guardian of the past— he or she is also charged with protecting the present from the past. In movies, artifacts and sites are dangerous locations threatening the contemporary world. Biblical sites and artifacts are especially dangerous. According to cinema logic, biblical times were magically charged, a period in which supernatural events occurred routinely, often mediated through powerful objects. This biblical magic is no longer typically manifest in the present, and yet often the hyperrational characters in horror and adventure films can, wittingly if they are villains and unwittingly if they are heroes, bring this dangerous biblical past into the present. The Bible, in both adventure and horror films, provides a convincing plot device rooted in Gothic and Orientalist literary traditions that drives stories about ancient threats to the contemporary, rational world. The Bible’s “otherness,” both in its antiquity and “Eastern-ness,” is potentially destabilizing; its formative role in structuring the social and moral order of modernity makes it particularly dangerous. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, set in 1936, government agents consult with Indy about a Nazi communiqué that they have intercepted regarding Hitler’s teams of archaeologists scouring the globe for ancient religious artifacts. Hitler wants to weaponize these artifacts, using them for their ancient powers. The intercepted communiqué mentions the lost city of Tanis, and Indy explains to the agents that this may be the resting place of the missing Ark of the Covenant. When the agents look confused, Indy asks them, “Didn’t you guys ever go to Sunday school?” Indy goes on to explain what is known of the Ark of the Covenant from the Bible; his colleague Marcus Brody intervenes



Murderous Archaeologists, Doubting Priests, and Mesopotamian Demons

61

with an extra-biblical suggestion about what happened to the Ark, that the Egyptian pharaoh Shishak may have stolen it and taken it to Tanis, a city later destroyed by a sandstorm. When the agents wonder why the Nazis want the Ark, Indy opens a massive leather-bound Bible, conveniently resting on the table between them, to a colorful biblical illustration showing three Hebrews holding the Ark in a battlefield while men collapse around it, killed by the light coming forth from it. Indy explains non-committedly that this light is “lightning, fire, the power of God or something.” Brody continues, “The Bible speaks of the Ark levelling mountains, and laying waste to entire regions. An army which carries the Ark before it is invincible.” Despite this convincing presentation, little in Jones and Brody’s explanation is justifiable, biblically or archaeologically. Tanis was discovered long before the 1936 setting of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the Bible does not suggest that Shishak took the Ark to Egypt. The Bible also gives little indication that the Ark was a massively destructive weapon, although it features prominently in the accounts of Joshua’s conquest of the land. Yet despite the deviance from actual biblical accounts, the film presents the Ark with tropes that audiences have come to expect about the Bible in adventure and horror cinema. Horror and adventure are, of course, distinct cinematic genres. To simplify a complex topic, adventure films present exotic locations and situations through kinetic sequences where characters overcome physical dangers. Horror films take a wider variety of forms but often explore primal fears, especially related to mortality. Yet there is an interesting confluence of similarities in how the Bible, biblical-era artifacts, and biblical characters are manifest in these genres.1 In both, the biblical world offers a presence that is potentially destabilizing to the modern status quo. Biblical times are presented as a foil to the present. The Bible connects the two periods and is usually taken as a formative document structuring the contemporary normative construct. It is perhaps this lingering connection between the ancient and present that allows, in such films, the past to come to life again. This is never positive; the ancient remnants have no place in the present and figures from the past exert a kind of negative agency on the people who interact with them. Both action and horror films seek to explore anxieties surrounding changing social and political norms. The Bible’s role as a constitutive document in establishing those norms makes it plausible that the Bible could also threaten those same norms. Adventure seeks to reify visions of the larger political order and the relationships between different groups of people. Horror, as Prince has argued, tackles issues like human nature and mortality (Prince 1995: 3). Both genres are very often conservative. The threatened social order is typically restored by the end of the film by violent heroic actions (Kendrick 2009: 69; Sobchack 1999: 122). The process helps normalize the status quo for the audience. In horror, the monstrous or demonic threat represents the real “others” in a society or on its margins (Cornea 2007: 176). Paul Wells further explains that monsters in horror films “operate as a mode of disruption and breakdown in the status quo” (2000: 9). That these monsters are “abnormal,” things that characters do not expect to encounter in everyday life, is a key distinguishing element of horror as a genre (Carroll 1990: 16). Monsters and artifacts from the biblical world function in precisely the same manner in cinema. Their presence offers a metaphor for the breakdown of normative

62

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

life and seemingly unshakeable social realities. According to Carroll, a monster becomes horrific because it merges socially constructed (binary) oppositions (such as pure/impure, self/other, dead/alive) (1990: 46–47). Carroll cites the 1973 The Exorcist’s demon-possessed little girl as a prime example (since the girl becomes simultaneously pure/impure, dead/alive, and self/other), yet this is typical of the Bible in cinema more generally. Filmmakers take what many audience members (believers and nonbelievers alike) will accept as a symbol of good and transform it into a menacing object. By making the Bible into a site of danger, horror and adventure filmmakers attempt to create a temporarily destabilizing experience for viewers. In biblical adventure and horror cinema, the conflict tends to fall along binary lines, the good and the evil. In these cases, according to Wells (2000: 8), the competitors manifest opposing traits: “normally, one rational and civilised, the other uncontrolled and irrational, often more primal and atavistic.” At times this conflict is explicitly theological, as in The Exorcist where the devil, in the body of a child, does battle with Catholic priests. For many scholars of horror films, such as Noël Carroll (1990: 31–34), Mary Douglas’s categorizations of purity and impurity are important for understanding how monsters should be understood (see Douglas [1966] 2002). They are impure, they contaminate the unsullied, and are implicitly contradictory (such as an ancient creature acting in the present or a dead human behaving as though alive). The monster reflects something that is out of place, an aberration that should not be: “Monsters are not only physically threatening; they are cognitively threatening” (Carroll 1990: 34). Biblical monsters are unsettlingly out of time (the ancient world) and place (the Middle East). Yet by fictitiously blurring these boundaries, films like The Exorcist may actually be reifying moral absolutes for some viewers (Derry 2009: 104–05). The Exorcist (1973) may have been ironically comforting for American viewers, who in the context of Watergate, the Vietnam War, and the era’s new social movements, found solace in a film offering a clear-cut vision of good and evil. So even though the idea of a demon-possessed little girl might have been momentarily frightening, the idea that “good” and “evil” are meaningful categories provides a sense of moral order to a seemingly chaotic world. Civilization’s widespread destruction because of these blurred boundaries is often horror’s subject. The 2015 Israeli film Jeruzalem, for example, depicts monsters that blur the boundaries between dead and alive and tourist and local, distinctions that are mediated by the Bible. The film opens with a Talmud quote (referencing Jeremiah 19) that identifies Jerusalem as the location of one of the three gates to Hell. Various biblical references such as Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones, Genesis’s Nephilim, and the resurrection of the dead establish a dangerous, supernatural biblical world promising to emerge in modern Israel. Participating in a traditional tourist activity, a character in Jeruzalem writes a prayer letter, angrily demanding that God return her dead brother, and inserts it into the bricks of the Western Wall. Immediately, she sees a flock of flying demons above her, suggesting that her dangerous request may be fulfilled. She and the rest of her group continue to Zedekiah’s Cave (Solomon’s Quarries) where they discover ancient graffiti images of winged zombies.2 Thereafter, the monstrous invasion begins, with Jerusalem’s holy tourist sites the supernatural battle’s ground zero. The winged zombies that emerge from and lay claim to Jerusalem’s holy sites symbolize the contested



Murderous Archaeologists, Doubting Priests, and Mesopotamian Demons

63

relationship between Israelis and tourists. The Bible, according to the film’s logic, is key to Israel’s economic prosperity through tourism, yet these same visitors threaten Israel’s sovereignty and its identity as a modern nation-state. Israel’s ancient (biblical) past threatens to overwhelm the identity of the contemporary polity through the hordes of monsters converging on ancient sites, much as tourists do in the holiday seasons. Yet it is not just apocalyptic destruction that is threatened in horror fiction. Various other elements of contemporary life are vulnerable, like the nuclear family (Wood 2003: 75). This is one of the main themes of The Exorcist and is first signaled by the mother’s dismay about the father’s absence from the family (Williams 1996: 106–15). The little girl, through demonic possession, becomes a profane, sexually aggressive creature who willfully makes violent bodily excretions and shows marked disdain for her mother and the clergy. This subversion of parental and clerical authority and the explicitly sacrilegious treatment of the priests represent significant threats to religious authority. Similarly, Rosemary’s Baby (1968) collapses archetypal fears of Satanism, witchcraft, and conspiracies with the changing roles of women and increasing personal reproductive control that emerged in the late 1960s with the equal rights movement and the increased availability of birth control pills (Wells 2000: 83). The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby well reflect their own times, but they are rooted in much older traditions. The Gothic literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is often cited as inspirational for horror cinema. While there are significant variations in this literature, a recurring concern is the relationship of the past to the present, a relationship often explored in film (Wells 2000: 7). In these Gothic films the starting premise is that biblical influence is positive, but can be corrupted. Sometimes it emerges that values rooted in the Bible are based on fundamentally unsound grounds (such as church conspiracies to hide the truth about the Bible). Or, a hostile element from biblical times now threatens to offer an analogous level of influence to the present day. This unsettling past and its presence in the modern world is both destabilizing and undesirable. Modernity subdued the supernatural activities of the past, but archaeologists can easily undo this progress. For example, in the 2008 Canadian film Ba’al: The Storm God, archaeologists bring together the four amulets that gave Ba’al his power over the earth’s weather. In Sumerian times, Ba’al’s divine father, El, reined in his power-mad son and told humans to hide the amulets in remote locations.3 Perhaps better known are Gozer and Zuul from Ghostbusters (1984), entities the film variously explains as having been worshipped by the Mesopotamians, Sumerians, and Hittites. Gozer, in particular, makes contact with various civilizations in order to destroy them and both entities possess humans as a means of bringing about this devastation. In both films, human contact with such entities is what is so undesirably dangerous and so unusual in contemporary times. That supernatural actions were part of everyday life in biblical times, at least according to adventure and horror cinema, is linked to older Orientalist conceptions of the relationship between the East and West problematized by Edward Said in his 1978 book. He identified Orientalism as “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the occident’” ([1978] 1994: 2). For Said, scholars, artists, and fiction writers in the West constructed the Orient (meaning the Middle East) as a location of irrational cultures,

64

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

where magical thinking, deviant sexual practices, and tyrannical governmental systems were the norm. These widely held ideas made the Middle East an ideal setting for horror and adventure fiction (McGeough 2015: 212–28). Scholars such as Jasmine Day (2006: 2) have argued that horror stories involving Near Eastern characters like mummies can perpetuate such outmoded racist discourses. For example, the horror trope of the endlessly self-reproducing monster may reflect what Said has identified as a common Orientalist trope of the chaotic swarming of the Eastern multitudes ([1978] 1994: 311). For Orientalists, the presence of large populations in the regions of Asia was deeply unsettling (McGeough 2015: 229) and threatened to overrun Europe much as zombies do in later horror films. Wells argues that the Orientalism picked up by later horror cinema relates to explorations of “the ways in which the constraints of one culture are liberated in the magical, nonsocial, predications of another” (2000: 38). In biblical horror and adventure, the ancient Near Eastern world offers a cultural foil to modernity in which magic threatens science, polyamorous sexuality threatens monogamy, and tyrannical despotism threatens democracy. The East’s seeming irrationality in Orientalist thought blends easily with the supernatural threats typical of Gothic fiction. So, in the various incarnations of Dracula, the vampiric figure stands in for an irrational East that threatens Western European culture, mirroring more generalized European anxieties toward, first, the Ottoman Empire and, then, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Meaningful symbols of European Christianity, like the cross or holy water, can halt the monster. Religious anxieties are entangled with the political. Thus The Exorcist’s opening scene establishes the exotic East as a dangerous location (Williams 1996: 109–10): Father Merrin works on an archaeological excavation in Iraq filmed at the actual site of Hetra, with the Parthian remains (recently destroyed by ISIL) shown prominently. There he unearths an evil statuette, representing the Mesopotamian demon Pazuzu.4 Numerous establishing shots rooted in Orientalist clichés and rendered with the convincing gravitas of 1970s American filmmaking create the film’s uneasy mood. Hearing the call to prayer at sunset, walking through the Eastern souk, striding by worshippers praying at the mosque, drinking coffee from elaborately decorated vessels in outdoor cafes, experiencing the inscrutability of Middle Eastern men in strange garb, Father Merrin’s unease grows along with the audience’s. When the film’s focus switches to the United States, the juxtaposition between irrational East and rational West establishes the film’s basic conflict. By exploring otherness so simplistically, Orientalist films can reify contemporary values, thus encouraging a perpetuation of Orientalist political perceptions. For example, Sean Malley has argued that the eponymous monster in Manticore (2005) represents Iraqi insurgents revolting against the American invasion through recourse to ancient mystical powers (2012: 168). As with much of the discourse surrounding the conflict, Manticore focuses blame for the postwar Iraqi state of affairs on the traditions of the land’s inhabitants, not on the invaders. The post-invasion Iraqi state of affairs was not the result of contemporary geopolitics but rather a symptom of more deeply seated historical and cultural problems. The weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were Orientalist monsters summoned by insurgents, not modern chemical and technological weapons.



Murderous Archaeologists, Doubting Priests, and Mesopotamian Demons

65

This kind of logic is perhaps more visible in explicitly colonialist fiction such as H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines (1885). The book’s title refers to a belief that King Solomon had access to a vast store of mineral wealth deep in Africa, a notion that was prominent in the nineteenth century after the European discovery of the archaeological site of Great Zimbabwe. Believing that people of African descent could not have built the magnificent structures found at the site, it was postulated that biblical peoples traveled to the region and were responsible for the city’s construction. The various cinematic adaptations of H. Rider Haggard’s book likewise perpetuate, to different degrees, the book’s nineteenth-century imperialist argument about the biblical colonization of ancient southern Africa. This argument, in its colonial context, was part of a larger justification of European seizure of those lands from Africans since it demonstrated that “biblical” peoples (and thus their Christian descendants) had a more ancient connection to that territory (McGeough 2015: 242–55). Most of these films do not make the relationship to King Solomon clear. For example, in the 1950 King Solomon’s Mines, the biblical connections are not explicit even though the same colonial arguments are made. Haggard’s sequel, She (1887), has a similar biblicalcolonial premise, as does the 1965 Hammer Film Productions adaptation. In some ways, the otherness of horror and adventure films can make them seem reassuring, as Prince suggests (1995: 3), because the danger is elsewhere. Yet the overturning of colonial power is part of what makes these films frightening for audiences, who fear the power enacted by the colonial West may be turned back upon Europe/North America. Roger Luckhurst sees mummy fiction in particular as a fantasy inversion of British imperialism in which the East exerts colonial style practices through an ancient priest or king’s actions (2012: 168). This logic can be found in biblical horror cinema as well. The third world, in horror fiction, contains almost infectious dangers, and tourists can unwittingly bring the nightmares back with them. In Stigmata (1999), for example, Frankie Paige becomes susceptible to spiritual possession and stigmata after her mother sends her a crucifix necklace from her trip to a small Brazilian community. Encounters with the other can threaten and undermine the rational, scientific, post-Enlightenment first world where supernatural events do not take place. Thus, The Exorcist’s possessed girl displays symptoms of a “disorder seen only in primitive cultures.” Indeed, demonic possession can take place elsewhere, but not usually in the rational West. In The Exorcist, part of the horror is that this kind of primitive danger has infected an innocent white girl in Georgetown. The ancient Middle East’s infectious danger is well attested in late nineteenth century–horror fiction and their later cinematic adaptations. Dracula, as already mentioned, features an Eastern monster that gradually transforms Westerners into monsters like himself. Usually, biblical or religious symbols can stop him. In the 1922 Nosferatu (loosely based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel), the vampire, Count Orlock, puts his German victims in trances and wields sexual power over European women. Deaths in the town are mistakenly taken as evidence of an Eastern plague. The 1931 Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, again features an Eastern count doing battle for the sexuality of a European woman and transforming other Europeans into monsters. The crucifix works as a powerful talisman to fend off this Eastern monster.

66

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Non-vampire monsters have similar powers and weaknesses. In Richard Marsh’s 1897 novel The Beetle (McGeough 2015: 231–42), an ancient Egyptian cult has survived for thousands of years and threatens to subvert modern Europe’s social order. The 1919 silent film of the same name deviates from the book’s plot but features an Egyptian princess who can transform herself into a beetle to kill her British enemies. Jeruzalem’s winged demons can infect humans, effectively turning them into monsters. Zuul and Gozer’s “keymaster” possesses Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis, respectively, in Ghostbusters. These monsters represent dangerous survivals from the ancient world or threatening out-of-place creatures that should not have been brought back from the East. Rational science cannot defeat them; one must use Eastern religious symbols and magic to contain the threats. To rephrase Salman Rushdie’s oft-cited cinematic reference (1982), the empire strikes back. Biblical languages are also often a signifier of horror, and, as a distinct sign of otherness, mark the dangers of the exotic. Horror films portray the sudden ability to speak or write in an ancient language as visceral evidence that something is wrong. In The Exorcist, Father Karras describes new language acquisition as the best evidence of demonic possession (and the possessed girl speaks Latin). These scenes prey on an almost instinctual discomfort of not being able to understand another language; the films use this linguistic confusion as symbolic of a more significant unease. Aramaic is a particularly charismatic language for horror, a language that is biblical, but unlike Hebrew not readily associated with a well-known living community and unlike Greek, written in a less readily identifiable script. In Stigmata, a hairdresser can suddenly speak and write (in a first-century CE script) Aramaic. In As Above, So Below (2014), an Aramaic inscription is found (surprisingly) in the Paris catacombs, reading “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here” and marking the entrance to a treasure chamber, which holds the Philosopher’s Stone. Another ancient “survival” typical of biblical horror and adventure films is the ancient cult or religious sect. The members of these ancient groups, when siding with the protagonists, tend to follow the “noble savage” stereotype (McGeough 2006: 183). These are people who have chosen to live apart from civilization’s corrupting influences and hold to seemingly noble, earlier values. Despite these groups’ best intentions, they are unable to fulfill their duties on their own and need assistance from the film’s usually white European male hero. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), the Brothers of the Cruciform Sword have dedicated their lives to safeguarding the Holy Grail. In Ba’al: The Storm God, the Inuit(!) are the caretakers of an ancient Sumerian amulet hidden in a remote location to limit the ancient storm god’s powers. More biblical are the Essenes in The Dig (2015), who still live in Qumran and reject the Jerusalem Temple’s authority. Well trained in modern combat, these Essenes work against a millenarian group attempting to usher in the apocalypse by reconstructing the Temple on the Temple Mount, sacrificing a red heifer, and using ancient Jewish artifacts gained in an illicit excavation in Jerusalem. These kinds of characters reenact a well-established, nineteenth-century, Orientalist trope. As a surviving relic of this ancient Eastern world, the Bible can also function as a weapon against the ancient Eastern evils that threaten the social order. The Bible’s materiality can be just as important as its contents. Cinematic exorcists wield it against



Murderous Archaeologists, Doubting Priests, and Mesopotamian Demons

67

demons, shielding themselves from the powers of evil. As such, prop designers usually provide large, leather-bound Bibles for dramatic effect. Holy water and crucifixes are also sometimes effective against monsters. Books or ancient scrolls are particularly efficacious (Kawin 2012: 10). Given this audience expectation, filmmakers play with which of these relics will be effective, and the protagonist’s attempts to identify efficacious tools mirror the audience’s own intertextual thinking about what weapons have worked against other film monsters. Often the threat is also an object. Raiders of the Lost Ark presents the Ark as a kind of mystical device that has ill-defined but profoundly destructive powers. The audience easily accepts that Indy is willing to risk his life to get the Ark before the Nazis do, because the Ark is, in Alfred Hitchcock’s terminology—“the MacGuffin.” The word itself is purposefully nonsensical,5 but as Alfred Hitchcock explained to François Truffaut: It’s the device, the gimmick, if you will, or the paper the spies are after. . . . So the “MacGuffin” is the term we use to cover all that sort of thing: to steal plans or documents, or discover a secret, it doesn’t matter what it is. And the logicians are wrong in trying to figure out the truth of a MacGuffin, since it’s beside the point. The only thing that really matters is that in the picture the plans, documents, or secrets must seem to be of vital importance to the characters. To me, the narrator, they’re of no importance whatever. (in Truffaut and Scott 1984: 138)

The MacGuffin is particularly prominent in films involving archaeology (McGeough 2006: 177), but can function similarly in horror films. The Bible is a perfect source of MacGuffins for screenwriters. Audiences associate the Bible with important issues and supernatural events for which they might otherwise not be willing to suspend their disbelief. Since the Bible describes unearthly visitations and miraculous events, narrative reference to the Bible can justify such intrusions into the modern world. And, the Bible has such diverse stories and literary styles that audiences can readily accept it contains things they may not be aware of or secrets not yet fully understood. Often such films’ source-critical exposition is painful for biblical scholars to watch, as in Stigmata when Father Kiernan expresses surprise that Jesus wrote none of the gospels. What seminary did he attend? Ancient extra-biblical documents also make very compelling MacGuffins and audiences, vaguely aware of discoveries like the Dead Sea Scrolls, are primed to accept that such documents are important enough to compel an adventure or horror plot. Sensationalist, pseudoscientific accounts of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1980s and 1990s convinced nonspecialists that organizations like the Catholic Church suppressed secrets in the scrolls. The Copper Scroll, in particular, inspires fiction writers, as it is a kind of treasure map inscribed on copper purporting to identify locations of hidden caches of gold and silver. Ba’al: The Storm God explicitly references a less scholarly inspiration, The Bible Code (Drosnin 1997), which argued that aliens embedded secret messages in the Bible and someone, using the proper cipher, could reveal these communications. The archaeologists in Ba’al: The Storm God use the same type  of cryptological technique to identify the locations of hidden amulets referred to in Sumerian artifacts that could be fit into missing spaces of “Dead Sea Scrolls.”

68

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Films like Stigmata depict a Catholic Church actively working to keep the information of extra-biblical documents hidden. One of the priests who translates ancient documents for the church describes the means through which the church keeps these secrets; important documents are divided up among the three main religious orders so that no one group can read the whole document. The Gospel of Thomas inspires Stigmata’s gospel-MacGuffin, which an end title card sequence explains as a text discovered at Nag Hamadi [sic]. The sequence also claims, in a rather disingenuous description of the Vatican’s approach to noncanonical tests, that “the Vatican refuses to recognize the Gospel and has described it as heresy.” No film character, however, ever calls the film’s gospel “Thomas.” In fact, the film claims its gospel was written by Jesus and, as befits a Catholic conspiracy film, this Protestant gospel focuses on Jesus’s message, rather than the institutional church. In films like Stigmata, The Body (2001), and The Da Vinci Code (2006), the church actively tries to suppress truths that can fundamentally undermine the church’s position and scare away the faithful. In The Body, an archaeological excavation in Israel reveals the remains of a crucified man that seems to be Jesus, thus proving that the resurrection did not happen and threatening to destroy Christianity. The Da Vinci Code reveals that Jesus had children (whose descendants became the Merovingian kings of France) and that the Holy Grail is not a chalice but Jesus’s bloodline. In these films the Bible is a purposefully misleading account of the past or a willfully misread one. The high stakes of proving or disproving what are presented as monolithic biblical truths (ignoring the Bible’s real interpretive complexities) lead to violence and political intrigue. Like horror’s more explicit monsters, this knowledge threatens the normative order. The Catholic Church provides an agent through which conservatism can fight back, although unlike horror films, this conservatism is not necessarily depicted in a positive light. Normativity is almost denaturalized through these adventure films and by the end a kind of unstable balance between truth and tradition is mediated between hero and church. The typical depictions of the Catholic Church in horror and adventure films are consistently inconsistent. On one hand, the church itself is usually a powerful and bureaucratically corrupt institution harboring the films’ antagonists. Church leaders have lost their faith and have settled into a materialist lifestyle entangled with worldly power. On the other hand, the pre-Vatican II church’s mysticism and arcane knowledge is presented as an accurate worldview and much of the conflict for the films’ protagonists is to convince others of this. Catholic Churches make atmospheric horror film settings, and Catholic ritual practices are both familiar enough to audiences to be recognizable and theatrical enough to make for good cinema. Horror, where references to blood abound, especially emphasizes Communion. Stigmata, for example, juxtaposes the blood dripping from its stigmatized protagonist’s body with a Catholic Communion scene. Bram Stoker’s Dracula perhaps established this connection between Communion and the horror monster, as it reconfigured the drinking of Christ’s blood to gain eternal salvation as a means to satiate vampires and support their eternal, undead existence. Most cinematic treatments of vampires preserve, usually unwittingly, this transposition of Communion. This conflicted view of Catholicism in horror films is striking; medieval cosmologies are depicted as accurate while the church is corrupt. A film like The Exorcist needs a world in which



Murderous Archaeologists, Doubting Priests, and Mesopotamian Demons

69

demons can possess humans but also needs to follow the traditional horror trope of a protagonist desperate for his superiors to believe the unbelievable. The rational world must also be revealed to be potentially irrational. Proving the rational to be irrational is the inverse of what typically occurs in mystery films. A major difference between the horror and mystery genres is the role of science and reason. In mysteries, the protagonist applies empiricism and rational logic to explain the unknown. Horror often reorients this arc and subverts it. Horror protagonists typically assume the rationality of the world, but the lead characters (and audience) gradually find their faith in reason challenged and overturned. Biblical horror often exaggerates this story line; lead characters begin as atheists, questioning priests, scientists, or a combination of all three and gradually accept miraculous events. In fact, Carroll has argued that there is a relationship between the origins of horror fiction and enlightenment ideals; one needs to presuppose a rational world for its subversion to horrify (1990: 57). Secular rationalism replaced by biblical supernaturalism meets this narrative need. In these films, the investigation of demonic possession or other supernatural events parodies detective story tropes through a plot structure that Carroll has categorized as the “complex discovery plot” (1990: 100–06). Investigators, often specialist priests, enact rigorous, empirically based investigations examining the settings of the supernatural events and presenting their findings to the church hierarchy. In The Exorcist, Father Merrin is brought in to advise on the possession because of his experiences with exorcisms in the Middle East and Africa. Indeed, most horror has an “expert” playing a Van Helsing–like role (Kawin 2012: 13); when biblical times are involved, these experts are religious leaders, biblical scholars, and archaeologists. In biblical adventure and horror films, the Vatican often plays the role that the police precinct or the government fulfills in the mystery genre. The cinematic Catholic Church has a quasi-legal authority and can arrest people, enact violence against them, or be called in when, in non-cinematic life, one would expect doctors or police. In The Exorcist and Stigmata, for example, the church and its hierarchy function as quasi-state actors, standing in for the police service and its bureaucracy, with all of the internal conflicts and unsympathetic supervisors of a police precinct in a more traditional detective film. In The Body, an attempt is made to explain why the Catholic Church takes authority over an archaeological excavation in Israel. A corrupt Israeli politician wants the Vatican to side with Israel and prevent East Jerusalem from being made the capital of Palestine. In real life, it is highly unlikely that a priest could take over an archaeological excavation or have police authority in Israel. Yet audiences accept this due to the cinematic traditions that have treated the church as holding quasi-legal powers relating to religious matters. These films question scientific authority and the power of technology to resolve problems. In The Exorcist, Chris MacNeil puts her possessed daughter through a battery of medical tests, which the film shows in great detail, before approaching Father Karras about an exorcism. The spinal tap is particularly gory; the camera lingers on blood spurting from the girl’s vein, mirroring to some extent the excretion of other fluids from the girl caused by the possession. Lingering shots of medical equipment with sound effects emphasizing the machinery’s noise establishes science’s

70

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

ineffectiveness against the ancient demon and the church’s religious power. When that technology does not work, when more sophisticated technology does not equate to more significant power, the fundamental orienting principles of society are threatened and global power structures may be subverted. Father Karras is, at first, part of this rational world, a priest who is trained in psychology and confesses to his superior that he is questioning his faith. He is reluctant to perform an exorcism but eventually relents, mirroring his character arc of a reawakening faith (and eventual martyrdom) brought on by the extraordinary events. Father Gutierrez in The Body also experiences similar challenges to his faith. He gradually loses his hard-earned faith only to learn at the film’s end that he has lost his faith in the church, not in God, and even comes to terms with the possibility that Jesus may not have been resurrected. In Stigmata, the atheist Frankie comes to believe in God after her experiences of stigmata, which, particularly in the director’s cut, are convincing evidence that she has been divinely selected. Father Andrew Kiernan is the tropic scientific priest, an organic chemist before receiving his calling to the clergy. As one of his superiors laments, “Andrew’s problem is that he can’t decide if he’s a scientist or a priest.” His inability to disprove the miracles seriously challenges scientific technocratic authority. Things and monsters from biblical times are consistently the MacGuffins that motivate plots in biblical adventure and horror. Their biblical connections make the fantastic events plausible, serious, and potentially quite frightening. Drawing on elements of the Gothic and Orientalism, biblical horror depicts situations where the ancient Near Eastern world uncomfortably influences and threatens the seemingly rational and modern Western world. Notably, the Bible’s constitutive role in the creation of modernity makes biblical threats extremely dangerous. The Bible also thereby provides a liminal connection between ancient and modern, Eastern and Western, and good and evil. While biblical elements can be stabilizing and even salvific, the Bible, biblical artifacts, and biblical monsters in these films are primarily threatening to modernity. As such, the lost Ark at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark is a happy event, despite Indiana Jones’s anger at the loss of its knowledge. The deeper cinematic logic is that studying such artifacts only leads to danger and that the Ark’s new home in a government warehouse reflects the triumph of twentieth-century reason over the ancient supernatural.

Notes 1 Walsh (2008), for example, notes how elements of both genres appear in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004). 2 Zedekiah’s Cave is the stone quarry Herod the Great used for his Temple renovation project. Legend holds it is where King Zedekiah hid during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem. The Freemasons held their first meeting in Jerusalem there and it was supposedly the site of a lost cache of Ottoman-era gold. These stories have given it prominence in horror and conspiracy lore about Jerusalem. 3 The fictional archaeologists in Ba’al: The Storm God are a bit confused about their mythology. The stories of El and Ba’al are better thought of as Ugaritic. Such films often



Murderous Archaeologists, Doubting Priests, and Mesopotamian Demons

71

use Sumer inaccurately as a catch-all reference for Mesopotamia and the non-biblical Levant. 4 Blatty’s (1971) novel mentions Pazuzu by name; the film does not. 5 Hitchcock humorously describes the word’s etymology: “You may be wondering where the term originated. It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says, ‘What’s that package up there in the baggage rack?’ And the other answers, ‘Oh, that’s a MacGuffin.’ The first one asks, ‘What’s a MacGuffin?’ ‘Well’, the other man says, ‘it’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.’ The first man says, ‘But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,’ and the other one answers, ‘Well then, that’s no MacGuffin!’ So you see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all” (in Truffaut and Scott 1984: 138).

Works cited Blatty, William Peter (1971), The Exorcist, New York: Harper & Row. Carroll, Noël (1990), The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart, New York: Routledge. Cornea, Christine (2007), Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Day, Jasmine (2006), The Mummy’s Curse: Mummymania in the English-Speaking World, London: Taylor & Francis. Derry, Charles (2009), Dark Dreams 2.0: A Psychological History of the Modern Horror Film from the 1950s to the 21st Century, Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Douglas, Mary ([1966] 2002), Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, New York: Routledge Classics. Drosnin, Michael (1997), The Bible Code, New York: Simon and Schuster. Haggard, H. Rider (1895), King Solomon’s Mines, London: Cassel. Haggard, H. Rider (1897), She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans. Kawin, Bruce F. (2012), Horror and the Horror Film, London: Anthem. Kendrick, James (2009), Film Violence: History, Ideology, Genre, London: Short Cuts/Wallflower. Luckhurst, Roger (2012), The Mummy’s Curse: The True History of a Dark Fantasy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Malley, Sean (2012), From Archaeology to Spectacle in Victorian Britain: The Case of Assyria, 1845-1854, Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Marsh, Richard (1897), The Beetle: A Mystery. Available online: http://www.gutenberg.org/ cache/epub/5164/pg5164.html (accessed January 3, 2017). McGeough, Kevin (2006), “Heroes, Mummies, and Treasure: Near Eastern Archaeology in the Movies,” Near Eastern Archaeology, 69 (3–4): 174–85. McGeough, Kevin (2015), The Ancient Near East in the Nineteenth Century: Appreciations and Appropriations. III. Fantasy and Alternative Histories, Hebrew Bible Monographs 69, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Prince, Stephen (1995), “Introduction: The Dark Genre and Its Paradoxes,” in Stephen Prince (ed.), The Horror Film, 1–11, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Rushdie, Salman (1982), “The Empire Writes Back with a Vengeance,” The Times UK, 3 July: 8. Said, Edward ([1978] 1994), Orientalism, New York: Vintage.

72

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Sobchak, Vivian (1999), Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film, 2nd enlarged ed., New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Stoker, Bram (1897), Dracula, Edinburgh: Constable & Robinson. Truffaut, François, and Helen Scott (1984), Hitchcock, New York: Simon and Schuster. Walsh, Richard (2008), “The Passion as Horror Film: St. Mel of the Cross,” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 20 (2008). Available online: https://www.questia.com/ library/journal/1G1-196832889/the-passion-as-horror-film-st-mel-of-the-cross (accessed January 3, 2017). Wells, Paul (2000), The Horror Genre: From Beelzebub to Blair Witch, London: Wallflower. Williams, Tony (1996), Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film, London: Associated University Presses. Wood, Robin (2003), Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan, expanded and revised ed., New York: Columbia University Press.

5

Comedic Films and the Bible George Aichele

Comedy in the theater and in film In the following, I use terms such as “comedy” and “comedic” broadly and make no attempt to distinguish precisely between the comedic and the non-comedic, or between various narrative forms that are associated with comedy or the comedic, such as satire, irony, or parody. That would require a much more complex (and lengthy) discussion than this. There is an extensive literature on the topic of theatrical comedy and tragedy, dating back at least as far as Aristotle’s Poetics (1967; for further references and an expanded version of portions of the following discussion, see Aichele 1980: 9–45). Classical comedy (typical of the ancient Greeks, but revived and substantially modified during the Enlightenment) was episodic. The comedies were theatrical performances that featured a series of contests between two characters, an eirōn (ironical one) and an alazōn (impostor), with alternating victories between them. I do not use the word “hero” to refer to either character as that term was usually reserved for the primary character(s) of classical tragedy. A third comedic character, the bōmolochos (buffoon or fool), sometimes also figured in the comedy’s plot, often as the eirōn’s “sidekick.” The last victory in the plot sequence was that of the eirōn, and it was often accomplished by unveiling the true identity of the impostor and casting him or her out of the community, or even killing him or her. This victory was often accompanied by a wedding or other celebration. However, this last victory was not necessarily a final one, and a return engagement (i.e., a further sequence of contests) was possible. (A similar structure appears in modern cartoon short films, such as those featuring Road Runner or Bugs Bunny.) In this the comedy was unlike the tragic drama, which ended with the death of the hero(es) or in some other more final manner. The comedies usually focused on themes that involved sexual license, crude behavior, or disrespect for those in authority. In contrast, the themes of the tragedies were typically serious and profound, often centering around moral issues. Accordingly, comedic language and gestures were typically vulgar, bawdy, and “offensive,” while the language of the tragedy was sophisticated and complex. The features of classical comedy and tragedy were not mixed in the same play, except during pauses between the performances in the ancient Dionysia theater festivals, when “satyr plays” that parodied the tragedies were sometimes performed. Some scholars believe that these

74

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

satyr plays may even have been the origin of the comedy. However, these dramas were not regarded as proper plays themselves, and few have survived in writing. Early Christian churches were generally suspicious or even hostile toward theatrical comedies, which were regarded as too blasphemous, sacrilegious, and vulgar for Christian taste or thought. However, many churches tolerated or accepted theatrical tragedies, despite their pagan roots, because tragedy focused on elevated moral themes and featured lofty and “inspiring” language. The tragedy was regarded as closely aligned with the Christian message or “Gospel,” and many of the medieval passion plays and other early church dramas plagiarized the elevated language and themes of classical tragedies. It was only during the Renaissance and later, when theater broke free from the classical ideals (and when the church had a less firm hold over the European mentality), that churches relaxed their negative view of comedies. Nevertheless, even as late as the eighteenth century (during the Enlightenment revival of classical comedy and tragedy), Christian hostility toward comedies such as those of Molière was extensive. For their part, some of these plays, such as Tartuffe (Molière 1984), mocked middleclass Christian piety and self-righteousness. Film writing and production have evolved both in relation to and in tension with theatrical drama. However, the cinema generally owes more to melodrama or other nonclassical narrative and theatrical forms that had always been part of folk culture and that became more popular with theatrical audiences as the Enlightenment and its neoclassical comedies and tragedies gave way to more romantic ideas and tastes. Many  of these stories have popular roots that are much older, extending back into ancient oral traditions and literature from many cultures. These roots include folk and fairy tales as well as ancient writings such as the epics of Homer and books of the Bible, among others. In their modern forms, these stories are often rewritten to such a degree that whatever relation they may have to the ancient texts is nearly unrecognizable. Although they are now widely called “comedies,” these other narrative forms typically display few strictly classical features, and they often mix comedic and a wide variety of non-comedic elements, including those of the tragedy. In that regard, they are similar to the Elizabethan-era comedies of Shakespeare, but they are also not unlike the ancient satyr plays. A story, play, or film is now considered a comedy whenever comedic elements predominate, even if these comedic elements are freely blended with other material in ways that would be unlikely or even unacceptable in classical comedy. As a result, modern theatrical and cinematic comedies take on widely varied forms that range from goofy slapstick to much “darker” narratives. It is not clear that any particular set of features makes them “comedies,” except that they usually make the audience laugh or feel good (the Aristotelian catharsis).

Comedic movies derived from the Bible Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) opens with a scene in a rude stable, where a peasant woman has just given birth. Three resplendent kings arrive with rich gifts for the newborn child, singing psalms of praise and devotion. Suddenly someone discovers



Comedic Films and the Bible

75

that they are in the wrong stable. The kings quickly grab the gifts from the protesting mother and rush down the alley toward another stable from which a golden light streams forth. The remainder of this comedic film derives from numerous further contrasts similar to this one between the life of its hapless protagonist Brian, the baby in the first stable, and that of Jesus Christ of Christianity, and also between the followers of Brian and those of Christ. The movie is in effect a satiric or slapstick commentary on Christian readings of the gospels (see further Davies 1998). When Life of Brian was released, it was met with wide hostility from Christian protesters who regarded it as blasphemous, and the movie was banned in several countries. Yet Life of Brian makes it very clear, not only in its opening scene but others as well, that it tells the story of a man with the unlikely name (in Roman Palestine) of Brian, not someone with the quite common name of Jesus. No biblical characters appear in the movie, apart from a goofy Pontius Pilate and a stereotypical Jesus, the latter of whom only appears once, and then quite briefly and from a distance, preaching a sermon on a hilltop that many in his audience apparently misunderstand (“blessed are the cheese makers”). Life of Brian alludes to the Christmas story and to the crucifixion, and there are scenes of parable teachings and miracles, but apart from this it deviates wildly from any of the gospels’ Jesus stories and can barely be called a Bible movie. However, apart from Life of Brian, very few so-called Jesus or Bible movies can be called comedies. To be sure, if other Bible films are viewed from an ironic, unsympathetic, or “camp” angle, the pious, pretentious, or sentimental qualities that are common to many of these films may become quite funny. This is true for many tragedies and other non-comedic dramas as well, and this is how the satyr plays overtly treated the tragedies. Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (2001) strongly encourages such a “camp” reading, and this film was not protested, but it also received very little attention and is generally regarded as of poor overall cinematic quality. Its clumsy filmmaking lacks the whimsy and the satiric finesse of Life of Brian. However, the vast majority of “Bible movies” have little to do with comedy in either its classical or nonclassical varieties. Beside Life of Brian and Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, there are apparently only a few other comedic Bible movies. These include ●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

Wholly Moses! (1980) History of the World Part I (1981) Evan Almighty (2007) Year One (2009) and the silent film Fig Leaves (1926).

Each of these films is also only barely a Bible movie, for they too include a great deal of non-biblical material. Like Life of Brian, they tell one or more stories that resemble one or more of the biblical stories, but few of them follow a biblical text even as closely as Life of Brian does. However, very few Bible movies of any sort follow a specific biblical text at all closely, and most of them include a great deal of non-biblical material. All of these movies are derived from the Jewish scriptures, and, apparently, none of them was protested to the degree that Life of Brian was, although Wholly Moses!

76

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

did receive negative attention from some Jewish groups. Perhaps this is because Jews and Christians have long felt relatively free to read the Jewish scriptures in a wide variety of ways. Christians, for example, read those texts as the “Old Testament” or as they are referenced in the New Testament. This may open up leeway for cinematic treatments of Hebrew Bible texts that might even be extended to include comedic readings. It is probably significant that the stories of Eden and the Flood are popular among the films listed above. The Eden and Flood stories have long been very popular among Christians, perhaps more so than other material from the Jewish scriptures. Eve and the Eden story are also widely (and quite loosely) referenced in modern secular advertising of products for women (see Edwards 2012). The Hebrew Bible is also often regarded by Christians as less important than the New Testament. In contrast, the reverent and often narrowly defined ways in which Christians tend to read the New Testament may account in part for the ancient Christian hostility to comedy in the theater. By extension, this reverence for the New Testament may also now influence what Christians expect a Bible movie to be. If earlier Christian suspicions of classical comedy have passed over to the medium of film, then comedic films about the gospels will be especially likely to be perceived as blasphemous. It appears that anything resembling a popular film comedy version of one or more of the Jesus stories, or quite possibly of any New Testament material at all (apart from isolated scenes; see below), is completely unacceptable. Few moviemakers have the skills or the daring, not only as filmmakers but as Bible readers, of the members of the Monty Python ensemble.

Comedic movies that reference the Bible Very few movies of any sort contain significant amounts of comedic material purporting to depict biblical texts from either the Jewish scriptures or the New Testament, but a great many movies do make comedic reference to biblical texts. These movies cannot be considered “Bible movies” even to the (sometimes quite minimal) degree that the ones noted above are, but they at least allude to the Bible in comedic ways at crucial points in the story. Some of these films are explicitly religion-themed, such as ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

Oh, God! (1977) Time Bandits (1981) Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire 1987) Michael (1996) Dogma (1999) or Bruce Almighty (2003) among many others.

These movies do not form sustained intertextual relations to biblical texts; for example, Dogma’s Metatron, rebel angels, demon skateboarders, and “buddy Jesus” are all indexes of biblical traditions, but not of any single continuous text or group of texts (such as the gospels). Still other movies are not about religion as such, or religion only appears in them as a side theme or in passing. Episodes, language, or images such as that of the rain



Comedic Films and the Bible

77

of frogs in Magnolia (1999), alluding to one of Moses’s plagues in Exodus, are often mentioned in “Bible and film” studies. However, Magnolia is hardly a comedy. Perhaps more relevant examples are the subtly ironic use of a crucifix in Chocolat (2000) or “the Jesus,” the child-abusive bowler in the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski (1998; see Burnett 2015). There are a great many such films, some more overt in their references or allusions to biblical texts than others. More extended examples appear in movies such as Pleasantville (1998; see further Aichele 2002), which features allusions to both the Flood and the Eden stories. Pleasantville features a TV repairman who is evidently a godlike being, and the TV remote that he provides miraculously sends the sibling teenagers David and Jennifer into the alternate reality of the 1950s situation comedy series of “Pleasantville.” The thunderstorm during which the repairman visits David and Jennifer at the movie’s beginning may suggest biblical overtones, but more overt biblical allusions appear when Jennifer, as the TV character Mary-Sue Parker, introduces awareness of sexuality and its pleasures to other characters. Immediately, bits of color begins to appear in their black-and-white world, and the older residents of the town become fearful. Then David, as Bud Parker, goes to the park with Pleasantville resident Margaret Henderson, where she plucks an apple (which turns deep red) and gives it to him. A rainstorm follows, and the fears of the residents increase. Later in the movie the repairman appears to David on a TV screen to express his comically divine displeasure at the changes that David and his sister have introduced into the community, and he suggests that he is the one who sent the “deluge,” which is hardly a flood but is followed by a colorful rainbow. Still later there are further signs that the TV-god has repented of his “wrath,” as color spreads rapidly everywhere, and color TVs begin to appear for sale in local stores.

Conclusion Pleasantville is certainly not a “Bible movie,” and even the semicontinuous attention to biblical texts that appears in the movie’s scenes is rare in films of this type. Far more numerous than movies such as Pleasantville are comedies that may make no specific reference to a biblical text at all, but that nevertheless can be understood in intertextual tension with such texts. These tensions are not simply similarities, and indeed, there may be no specific language, image, or sequence of events in the film that is suggestive of anything in the Bible. Nevertheless, the portrayal of characters and the relationships between them or other elements of a more thematic or conceptual sort may open up points of mutual critique and illumination between the film and a biblical text. Through this critique and illumination, the film’s viewer may be invited to read the biblical text in a more comedic manner, even as she is also invited to understand the film in a different way than she might have otherwise. (e.g., see Aichele 2014: 150–65, 184–98.) However, much of the Bible seems to contain very little material that is overtly comedic or would lend itself to comedic treatment. In general, comedy and the Bible seem to make strange bedfellows, and perhaps when comedy, film, and the Bible are brought together this strangeness comes more clearly to light. Only a few of the biblical

78

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

books could be considered entirely or deeply comedic. The book of Jonah is richly whimsical, and Job’s ironies, though darker, also have a comedic quality. Similarly, the Gospel of Mark could be read as a precursor to the paradoxical humor of Kafka’s writings (as in Borges 1981; see also Via 1975). A few other biblical books might also be considered comedic, but isolated bits that are amenable to comedic treatment such as the Eden and Flood stories noted above are far more common if the reader has “eyes to see them.” Despite this, it is also the case that many of the Bible’s readers, including biblical scholars, have tended to read all of the biblical texts in non-comedic ways. Furthermore, and perhaps the most telling of all, whether the texts are fit subjects for comedic treatment or not, non-comedic Bible movies are not accompanied by protests, and they often generate lots of ticket sales and profits, important factors in the making and distributing of movies. More movies that showed viewers comedic sides of biblical texts from the Jewish scriptures and perhaps especially the New Testament would probably be a good thing, as would more willingness on the part of readers to see comedic aspects of biblical texts.

Works cited Aichele, George (1980), Theology as Comedy: Critical and Theoretical Implications, Lanham: University Press of America. Digital edition: https://www.academia.edu/ 18380140/Theology_as_Comedy_Critical_and_Theoretical_Implications. Aichele, George (2002), “Sitcom Mythology,” in George Aichele and Richard Walsh (eds.), Screening Scripture: Intertextual Connections Between Scripture and Film, 100–19, Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Aichele, George (2014), Tales of Posthumanity: The Bible and Contemporary Popular Culture, The Bible in the Modern World, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Aristotle (1967), Poetics, trans. Gerald Else, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Borges, Jorge Luis (1981), “The Gospel According to Mark,” in Emir Rodriguez Monegal and Alastair Reid (eds.), Borges: A Reader, 308–11, New York: E. P. Dutton. Burnett, Fred W. (2015), “The Characterization of the Dude and Women in The Big Lebowski: The Dude as Slacker,” in Melissa C. Stewart (ed.), Simulating Aichele: Essays in Bible, Film, Culture and Theory, 161–95, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Davies, Philip R. (1998), “Life of Brian Research,” in J. Cheryl Exum and Stephen D. Moore (eds.), Biblical Studies Cultural Studies: The Third Sheffield Colloquium, 400–14, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic. Edwards, Katie B. (2012), Admen and Eve: The Bible in Contemporary Advertising, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) (1984), Tartuffe, in trans. John Wood, The Misanthrope and Other Plays, 97–164, New York: Viking Penguin. Via, Dan Otto, Jr. (1975), Kerygma and Comedy in the New Testament, Philadelphia: Fortress.

6

The First Seventy Years of Jesus Films: A Canonical, Source-Critical History Jeffrey L. Staley

The cinematic history of Jesus films includes film genres that sound oddly familiar to biblical scholars—passion gospel, infancy gospel, sayings gospel, and bios-gospel. The complex source-critical and intertextual relationships between such films even seem to reflect socioeconomic and gendered politics similar to those hypothesized for nascent Christianity’s literary history. What is particularly interesting, however, is how Jesus film history with its corresponding genres both parallels and diverges from the generally accepted trajectory of early gospel developments. I discuss those parallels and divergences here hoping to provide “Bible in film” scholars with heuristic tools for introducing students both to New Testament studies and to film studies. Whether my analysis of Jesus film history offers New Testament scholars additional insights into how ancient canonical texts might have developed is a provocative, but secondary question—one that is beyond this chapter’s scope. Minimally, I think it notable that after seventy years of Jesus films, Hollywood had produced three intertwined (synoptic-like), biopic Jesus stories, a “sayings” (Q) Jesus story, a “passion narrative” Jesus story, and one additional, radical Jesus biopic that challenged from an outsider’s perspective the three intertwined Jesus biopics. Surprisingly, it would be a subsequent passion gospel film that confirmed the “canonical status” of three of the four biopic Jesus films. I first used the word “canon” to describe three Jesus biopics in my essay, “Why Use Jesus Movies When Teaching the Synoptic Gospels?” (2013b). Only later did “canon” suggest to me a broader trajectory in early Jesus films. More recently, Matt Page has begun using “canon” to describe the entire history of biblical films, for which he proposes seven ages, without, however, attempting to tease out any authoritative claims suggested by “canon” (2015; see also Page herein). In an essay dealing with the rare 1913 film, The Shadow of Nazareth, Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch points to the deeper, authoritative claims typically associated with the word “canon.” She writes of “the ‘lure’ and hegemony of later Hollywood,” and of “the propensity of historians to reconstruct the silent [film] era around selected ‘greats’” (2016: 132). She adds, “The construction of such ‘canons’ by later scholars involves value-laden aesthetic and ideological judgments that should be critically examined” (132–33; compare Self 2016). While I respect her

80

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

appeal for such an examination, I am not interested in film scholars’ “canons,” but in the ways Jesus film directors borrow from precursors when constructing their own Jesus stories (in much the same way that the canonical gospels depend upon and use each other), and what that borrowing might tell us about their values (i.e., what they are watching and interpreting). The modes of early twentieth-century cinematic storytelling—where they existed at all—were generally conservative. The nature of the medium dictated storytelling strategies. Since films were silent, pantomime worked best when filming human behavior. Before the innovation of intertitles in 1903 (Foster 2014), audiences had to be culturally attuned to the plot and characters portrayed onscreen to understand the cinematic story. Thus, the life of Christ, comparable classic stories, and fairy tales were storehouses for those seeking to profit from the new medium. Later, as the American film industry began to be policed by moneyed, male hierarchies, the conservatism of cinematic storytelling only increased. It would take the influence of an Italian director, Pier Pao Pasolini, and the demise of the Motion Picture Production Code (Hays Code) in 1968 in the United States to create a Sitz im Leben (a life setting) that would allow directors to move beyond the biopic and explore different ways of telling the Jesus story. Ironically, and apparently unknowingly, the new breed of post-Hays Code directors would “discover” variations of the same storytelling genres that historians had argued produced the canonical gospels in the first place.

The “pre-canonical” era of Jesus movies (1906–13) Alice Guy’s La Naissance, la vie et la mort du Christ (1906) and Ferdinand Zecca’s La Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ (1902–05, 1907) share an intertwined history that mimics, in some ways, the oral origins of the earliest Jesus traditions (Brant 2016: 160). Guy’s film was released in Paris in April 1906 and in the United States in May 1907. At the Paris Exposition of 1900, Guy had seen James Tissot’s Bible illustrations, and she was so impressed with their realism and popularity that she decided to make a film on the life of Jesus based largely on Tissot’s collection (Shepherd 2016: 60). And although the earliest form of Zecca’s film predated Guy’s by eight years, Zecca’s earliest extant version dates from about 1907 and reveals significant points of contact with Guy’s film (Friesen 2016: 87–92). Zecca’s film went through at least two other iterations, obtaining its final form in 1913.1 Like the canonical Gospel of Mark, Guy’s film is a passion narrative with a long introduction—albeit with a non-Markan birth narrative taking the place of Jesus’s baptism. Similar to Mark, Guy’s film is episodic. She ends the public ministry of Jesus with Mary Magdalene anointing Jesus’s feet with her hair, and follows that immediately with “Palm Sunday.” It is not clear whether Guy implies a causal connection between Mary’s scandalous behavior and Jesus’s last days, but the prominent place given to women throughout Guy’s film at least suggests that possibility.2 Like the gospels themselves, Guy’s and Zecca’s films were anonymous creations. Directors’ names did not appear onscreen until about 1912. Moreover, like oral



The First Seventy Years of Jesus Films

81

tradition itself, early films were continually reconfigured by the storefront businesses and dance halls owners who advertised and showed the films. Thus, Alain Boillat and Valentine Robert write that “the editorial control of a film during the early years of kinematography fell entirely to the exhibitor—a form of ‘rewriting’ if ever there was one” (2016: 25). It follows then, that like oral tradition itself, there were no “precursors” of these celluloid Jesuses; there is no obtainable first “historical Jesus film” behind the pluriform performances preserved on archival transparency. Consequently, there is no evidence that any two exhibited versions of Guy’s or Zecca’s films were precisely the same. In fact, evoking text criticism’s recent disavowal of “originals,” Boillat and Robert claim the “heterogeneity and instability of [these early] films” makes “the search for an ‘original’” “utopian and inappropriate” (2016: 26; see also Friesen 2016: 78–79). Just as orality studies have exposed the false premise of origins with regard to Jesus’s words and their Sitz im Leben, so also the history of cinema has exposed the futility of attempts to recover an “original” Jesus film. Nevertheless, from this gelatinous ooze will arise one bona fide exemplar, a fossilized precursor—and another woman, Gene Gauntier, will be the creative genius behind that Jesus film. In 1911, the Kalem Company sent Sidney Olcott overseas to film one-reel spectacles, but his Jesus film (From the Manger to the Cross [1912]) was apparently an afterthought, the brainchild of Gene Gauntier, who was already well known for her work with him. If there ever actually was a “proto-Mark” behind the present canonical Mark (Burkett 2004), Olcott’s film would be its counterpart in the Jesus film trajectory. Olcott’s film was shot “on location” in Egypt and Palestine (the Ottoman Empire) and mixes a historicizing, geographical interest with a second-level creativity in storytelling that moves beyond the independent, interchangeable tableaux of Guy and Zecca. Olcott’s film begins with a harmonizing of Matthew’s and Luke’s birth narratives reminiscent of Guy’s and Zecca’s films—but without any visible angels to direct the holy family on their lengthy travels. In keeping with Mark’s presumed original ending, Olcott’s film has no resurrection appearances. In fact, there is no Easter morning scene at all. The film simply ends with Jesus’s crucifixion. In this sense, the film begs for a visual resolution to Easter that is more in keeping with the realistic cinematic storytelling that Olcott preferred—a storytelling technique that had rejected the magical literalism of Guy and Zecca—but had not yet found a believable rendering of Easter that his more sophisticated viewing audiences would find convincing. It will be DeMille’s task to find a solution to Olcott’s Holy Land realism. Whereas Guy’s and Zecca’s films utilize the magical effects of the new film technology with their appearing and disappearing angels, rising Jesus, and additional wonderful effects, Olcott eschews those for the “magic” of being transported to the Holy Land itself. Olcott also moves beyond Guy and Zecca’s episodic plotting, and like the Gospel of Mark, finds a unique way to link the Galilean ministry of Jesus with the passion narrative. Whereas the Gospel of Mark links Jesus’s Galilean ministry and his Judean passion through the stories of John the Baptizer’s arrest and death (Mk 1:14; 6:14-29; 9:13; 11:29-33), Olcott connects the youthful Jesus with his (adult) destiny through the invention of the film’s most stunning scene. Olcott references Tissot’s The Youth of Jesus, where the carpenter boy carries a board across his shoulders as his parents watch from the background (see Figure 6.1). But in

82

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Figure 6.1  James Tissot’s The Youth of Jesus.

Figure 6.2  The shadow of the cross in From the Manger to the Cross (1912).



The First Seventy Years of Jesus Films

83

a brilliant stroke, Olcott positions Jesus in such a way that as he enters the sunlight, the shadow of the plank across his shoulders makes a cruciform on the ground (see Figure 6.2). His mother sees the shadow and covers her mouth in awe or fright, thus bringing to an end the film’s first third. This naturalistic scene—a shadow image to which Jesus is oblivious—functions “literally” as a foreshadowing of Jesus’s destiny, and is a harbinger of film’s future storytelling possibilities. Cecil B. DeMille, George Stevens, and Martin Scorsese will, each in their own unique ways, follow Olcott’s lead and use crosses proleptically as revelatory images of Jesus’s destiny.

The “canonical” era of Jesus movies (1927–65) Most scholars writing on the history of Jesus movies include in their surveys D. W. Griffith’s 1916 film, Intolerance. Its seventeen-minute fragmentary story of Jesus is crosscut within the three-and-a-half hour film, which chronicles among other things, the Babylonian Empire’s demise. Perhaps the closest antecedent to Intolerance in early Christian history would be Pliny the Younger’s or Tacitus’s passing references to early Christians—couched as they are within the context of broader Roman imperial concerns (Crossan 1998: 3–10). This same assessment might fit Hollywood’s 1950s “sword-and-sandal” spectacle films, where the Jesus story functions as a footnote or backstory to broader imperial narratives. In many ways, Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings (1927), the last Jesus silent, is Hollywood’s version of the Gospel of Mark. This is most obvious in the film’s opening in media res of Jesus’s public ministry—without reference to a birth narrative. As in Mark, Jesus first appears as an adult. In fact, DeMille’s young Mark is an eyewitness to Jesus’s miracles and passion, appearing onscreen (although initially unidentified) as the recipient of Jesus’s first miracle. The disciple Matthew also appears occasionally in the background, taking notes; and the disciple John is an important, contemplative presence throughout much of the film. Thus, DeMille’s film situates its authoritative claims squarely within the framework of church tradition. Only Luke is without a representative in the film. Interestingly, Nicholas Ray’s 1961 King of Kings will supply that additional witness through his character Lucius, a Roman centurion. DeMille’s film is the last major Jesus film featuring a woman screenwriter. But it is not clear how much of the finished film reflects Jeanie MacPherson’s imagination. MacPherson began writing exclusively for DeMille in 1915 (Gaines 2013), and is perhaps responsible for the Judas/Mary Magdalene/Jesus triangle that opens the film (for the theatrical precursor, see Staley and Walsh 2007: 191). Judas, Mary Magdalene’s lover, has been missing from her opulent banquet table for many days, and when she discovers that he has left her for another man (the homoerotic undertones are obvious), she speeds off in her zebra-powered chariot to find him. In the process, Mary Magdalene encounters Jesus, who casts from her the seven deadly sins. Interestingly, Mary Magdalene does not reappear again until Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, where she leads the vocal opposition to the crowd shouting for Jesus’s crucifixion. It will be Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) that “fill in” the missing pieces of Mary Magdalene’s cine-canonic role hinted at by DeMille.

84

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Hollywood’s second major Jesus movie was Nicholas Ray’s 1961 King of Kings. Like the Gospel of Luke, which explicitly acknowledges its predecessors (1:1), Ray’s film pays homage to its predecessor by mimicking DeMille’s title (Tatum 2013: 79). Like Luke, Ray’s film begins with a lengthy prologue leading up to Jesus’s birth in a Bethlehem manger (for a comparison of Luke and this film, see Walsh 2003: 121–46). The fictive centurion, Lucius (a name suspiciously like a Romanized “Luke”), spies on Jesus for Pilate and reports what he has seen. Not surprisingly, Lucius, the jaded skeptic, eventually becomes a believer. Ray only hints at DeMille’s Judas/Mary Magdalene/Jesus triangle. It is referenced when Judas and Barabbas meet Jesus for the first time. After Jesus stands down a mob bent on stoning Mary Magdalene for adultery, Judas contemplates following “the new messiah of peace” instead of Barabbas. Unlike DeMille’s characterization, there are no erotic undertones in Ray’s Mary Magdalene scenes. Hollywood’s third Jesus movie was George Stevens’s 1965 The Greatest Story Ever Told. Like the author of the Gospel of John, and unlike Ray’s film, Stevens apparently had no interest in drawing explicit connections between his film and DeMille’s. The tenuous connections one finds must be teased out by way of contrast rather than from specific shared images. Stevens’s film opens by quoting Jn 1:1-18; and the Johannine characters of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus (John 11) appear early. The film’s high Christology (e.g., Jesus quotes Jn 14:9, “He who sees the Son, sees the Father”) also has more in common with the Gospel of John than with either of the two earlier Hollywood Jesus films (for a comparison of John and this film, see Walsh 2003: 147–71). Unlike Ray or DeMille, Stevens does not invent an eyewitness writer character. Instead, Herod and his minions quote scripture as a way to interpret and thwart Jesus’s activities. Like Ray before him, Stevens also films Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount— apparently as an answer to Ray,3 whose Roman centurion, Lucius, hears the sermon as an innocuous evocation of “love, peace, and the brotherhood of man.” By way of contrast, Stevens’s Sermon on the Mount provokes riots in Capernaum. Similarly, Stevens’s portrayals of John the Baptist are deeply politicized. Finally, Mary Magdalene  and Judas’s intertwined relationship, which in Ray’s film is a leftover fragment of DeMille’s romantic triangle, is totally missing from Stevens’s film. Judas shows no awareness of Mary Magdalene’s presence. The term “synoptic” expresses the scholarly consensus that the first three gospels— Matthew, Mark, and Luke—can be arranged in such a way that one can “see them together” for the material they share. As scholars have noted, approximately 90 percent of Mark is shared with Matthew, and 55 percent of Mark is shared with Luke. Additionally, 21 percent of Luke is shared material with Matthew—but not shared with Mark. By 1965—and ironically not far off from the sixty years scholars posit between the early Jesus oral tradition and the completion of the Third Gospel—Hollywood had produced three lavish, big-budget, studio-financed Jesus movies. But the question remains as to whether there is any connection between Ray’s and DeMille’s films that runs deeper than the superficiality of title and exemplar (the Jesus story). An even



The First Seventy Years of Jesus Films

85

more far-reaching question is whether Stevens’s The Greatest Story Ever Told has any connection to DeMille’s or Ray’s films. Unlike the Synoptic Gospels, which seem quite similar once the reader gets past Matthew’s and Luke’s unique opening scenes, Hollywood’s three big Jesus films do not seem similar at all. The films’ unique beginning points are comparable to the unique beginning points of each Synoptic Gospel—but from there the films veer off on their own, not joining up again until they meet during Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. DeMille’s film opens with a lengthy banquet scene in Mary Magdalene’s opulent brothel, where she pines for her lover, Judas. Ray’s film begins sixty years before the birth of Jesus with the Roman Pompey’s capture of Jerusalem and his desecration of the Jewish Temple. And Stevens’s film opens with an interior shot of a Greek Orthodox cupola, with a narrator intoning the opening verses of John 1. Despite these dissimilar beginning points, the films share connections that evoke the relationship between the Synoptic Gospels, as is evident in the first two miracle stories found in each film. In each film, Jesus first heals a lame person, and then he heals a blind person. In DeMille’s and Ray’s films, these two miracles are back-to-back. DeMille, however, has a one-minute transition between the miracles, but immediately thereafter the young Mark continues to lead an unnamed blind girl to Mary, the mother of Jesus. In contrast to DeMille and Ray, Stevens separates the two healings by more than thirty minutes. Despite allusions to other miracles in this interval, the audience does not see any miracles onscreen. So, as with DeMille and Ray, these are the first two miracles viewers actually see in Stevens’s film. Significantly, no canonical gospel arranges lame person/blind person miracles in a similar sequence. This miracle story sequence is thus purely cinematic. The films’ adherence to the miracle sequence, coupled with the changes each director makes in their rendering, suggests that DeMille’s film has “canonical” status for Ray and Stevens. To viewers not familiar with the gospel texts, Ray’s and Stevens’s films could appear to be playing dangerously “fast and loose” with the biblical accounts if they failed to follow DeMille’s sequence. But to understand more fully the canonical authority of DeMille’s film, it will be necessary to show how Ray and Stevens maintain DeMille’s miracle story sequence while reorienting the meaning that DeMille attached to them. The King of Kings’ healing of the lame boy begins at the 8:32 mark, with an intertitle quoting Mk 2:1-2. The scene is a city square, chock-full of people, many of whom are decrepit and ill. In the midst of this chaos, a child, apparently blind, wanders about trying to find someone who will take her to “Him.” Soon, a boy, later identified as Mark, squeezes out from the crowd, waggling his foot in the air (10:26). When a Pharisee threatens Mark, Mark replies, “This I know—that I was lame before, but now I walk” (a reworking of Jn 9:25). After the “Giant Disciple” Peter saves Mark from a beating, the blind beggar girl finds Mark, who then leads her to Mary (in nun-like garb). The Pharisees have just announced the Sabbath’s beginning when Mary directs both children to her son. Playing her Catholic role as co-redemptrix, Mary pleads on behalf of the blind girl, whom Jesus then heals. In one of DeMille’s most famous scenes, the audience sees Jesus for the first time through the restored sight of the little girl.

86

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

DeMille’s choice of settings is significant. Although he references Mark 2—a healing that occurs indoors—DeMille focuses instead on the miracle’s proclamation to those outside the house. DeMille uses medium close shots to focus on the teeming, ragged crowds of people in the public square. The audience—and apparently the crowds in the street—have not seen the miracle at all. Rather they (and viewers) see a preadolescent Mark fearlessly witnessing to Jesus’s healing power. Here, DeMille associates religious faith with children and perhaps with the impoverished, ignorant immigrant masses. It has a voice in the public arena—albeit the only adults who take it seriously are the “Catholics” (Peter and Mary). Judas is cynical, the Romans are suspicious, and the Jewish crowds are either half-blind or persecutory.4 Thus, DeMille’s two miracles are decidedly religious and gender-specific: a robust, masculine, “faith-without-sight” Protestantism with the healing of Mark; a gentle, feminine, “faith-by-sight” Catholicism with the healing of the blind girl. DeMille has interwoven two disparate miracle stories made up of ninety-nine camera shots into a seamless ten-minute, twelve-second sequence. Interestingly, both Ray and Stevens will separate these miracles, returning them once again to a more gospel-like episodic plot structure. King of Kings’ one minute, forty-eight second healing of a lame boy appears at the 52:03 mark. The healing of the blind man is at 53:51, and in an apparent nod to the sword-and-sandal spectacles of the 1950s, Jesus does not appear onscreen in the first miracle. In the second miracle, the audience only sees Jesus’s blue eyes in extreme close-up. In the first miracle, only the shadow of Jesus’s arm is shown hovering over a lame boy, who lies in bed at home. Then, in an apparent tribute to DeMille, the narrator’s voice is heard, as a sort of intertitle. In fact, all of Jesus’s miracles in Ray’s film are presented through third-person narration—through the voice of the film’s “believing” narrator (Orson Wells) or through the voice of the skeptical Lucius. There are a total of fifteen camera shots in the two scenes. In contrast to DeMille, the recipients of both healings are older males, and the mother of Jesus is nowhere onscreen. Both of Ray’s miracles are private affairs. The first takes place in a home, surrounded by family; the second, on an empty street. Again, this is the opposite of DeMille, where at least the proclamation of Mark’s healing took place in a town square, while the healing of the blind girl took place in Mary’s home. There are no special effects in Ray’s rendering of the two miracles; there is not even a changing point of view (a cut away from the victim and a cut back to the accomplished miracle). Unlike DeMille, there are no political ramifications to these healings, and neither one of the healed people follows Jesus. No Pharisees, priests, or Romans are nearby to raise questions or challenge the Christian interpretation of the events,5 and there is no evocation of Sabbath law. In fact, Ray’s film lets the audience know that “it was the time of miracles,” as though this were a unique moment in human history, foreign to his viewing audience. Religion, thus, plays no obvious role in the scenes. The miracles themselves have been radically compartmentalized to the individual, to the home, and to a particular moment in the ancient past. No outsiders—except the audience—are privy to Jesus’s miracles. Finally, in The Greatest Story Ever Told, the healing of the lame boy is a six-minute forty-three second, fifty-three shot sequence. It begins at the 1.00:52 mark when Jesus



The First Seventy Years of Jesus Films

87

begins to cover his head in preparation for entering the Capernaum synagogue, and continues until 1.07:35 when he exits the synagogue. The healing of the blind man, Old Aram, takes place in Nazareth at the village well, and occurs at the 1.43:33 mark.6 Following Ray’s lead, the healing of the lame boy does not provoke any antagonism. The scene simply ends with an elderly man clasping Jesus’s hands as Jesus leaves the synagogue. Moreover, the scene immediately following the miracle moves directly to John the Baptist’s arrest. This cut can be read as a critical commentary on DeMille’s film, where that story’s conflict revolves around Caiaphas’s opposition to Jesus. By way of contrast, Jesus’s miracles in Stevens’s film do not provoke conflict; rather, John the Baptist’s preaching does that. By postponing Jesus’s political implications until after John’s arrest, Stevens is able to concentrate on Jesus’s ideas, particularly the subjective, personal quality of faith. But while Stevens’s setting is clearly a religious one (in a synagogue in contrast to DeMille’s town square and Ray’s empty street), the dialogue and camera shots undermine any traditional Christian understanding of the scene. It is not entirely clear whether a miracle has even occurred. Jesus tells the lame boy that he cannot walk because he has not tried. And although Jesus constantly fingers his tzitzit throughout the synagogue scene, it is not clear for what he is praying. The subsequent dialogue suggests that Jesus’s prayers have simply strengthened the boy’s faith. If this is so, the scene does not reveal Jesus’s unique power; instead it illustrates the power of communal care and prayer. An unusual camera shot seems to confirm this interpretation. Only once in the film does any character address a person off-screen; it is here as the camera focuses on the synagogue leader when he asks, “Who are you?” And Jesus, off-screen, replies, “I am Jesus.” The effect dramatically contrasts with the healing of the blind girl in DeMille’s film. There, the audience shared the child’s faith and saw Jesus as she saw him. In Stevens’s film, however, the audience takes on the role of the off-screen Jesus by becoming the direct recipient of the synagogue leader’s Johannine question: “Who are you?” (compare Jn 1:19). For Stevens, then, the audience is invited—not to play the part of the healed, but to become Jesus the healer. While the next miracle in Stevens’s film is the healing of a blind person, as is the case with DeMille and Ray, it occurs nearly thirty-seven minutes later. Following the lead of Ray, the second miracle has just two characters—Jesus and the blind person. As in Ray’s film, both of the healed are male; and as in Ray’s film, the first male is young, the second is old. But whereas the characters in Ray’s miracles never reappear, both healed persons in Stevens’s film become Jesus’s followers. Most notably, both appear as witnesses to the raising of Lazarus (2.39:29). Finally, like DeMille, Stevens gives a name to one of his two healed characters (“Old Aram,” the blind man of Nazareth). Stevens only includes one more miracle, and that is the raising of Lazarus. Like the healing of the lame boy, it is also a public miracle; and like the healing of the lame boy, Stevens places it within a specific religious community. But in the Lazarus scene there is no particular building that represents the religious community. Instead, Stevens overlays the proclamation of Jesus as messiah with Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, creating a Christian scene reminiscent of DeMille’s second miracle where the implicit Christian message was reflected in Mary’s intercession on behalf of the blind girl.

88

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

As is the case with the Synoptic Gospels, the sequence of these two miracle stories in the three films suggests that Ray and Stevens not only are dependent upon their “Markan (DeMille)” exemplar, but also adapt their authoritative exemplar to fit their changed historical and social situations. Although Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Il vangelo secondo Matteo (1964) is based on the Gospel of Matthew, it functions like the New Testament’s Gospel of John in the Jesus movie canon. Coincidentally, it is also the fourth major twentieth-century biopic Jesus movie. Like the Gospel of John, Pasolini’s Il vangelo secondo Matteo is a maverick film. It was not produced in Hollywood, but in Italy; and it was shot in black and white during the era of color, with largely untrained actors and actresses. Like Olcott’s film, it is a “literalistic” portrayal of Jesus, but it achieves this literalism by adhering to Matthew—not by aiming as Olcott did at geographic authenticity. In contrast to the Gospel of John and to earlier Jesus films, Pasolini’s Jesus is the most human Jesus seen on the silver screen. In this sense, it sets the Christological tone for the fragmentary, episodic Jesus films to follow—Godspell (1973) and Jesus Christ Superstar (1973). Like the Gospel of John, which has tantalizing connections to the synoptic tradition (e.g., the healing of the royal official’s son, the feeding of the five thousand, and walking on water), Pasolini’s Matthew film reveals subtle connections to the Gospel of John. These are most evident in Jesus’s baptism and in the passion narrative. The “Beloved Disciple” (John) is the youngest of Jesus’s twelve, and is closest to Jesus during the last day of Jesus’s life. John is with Andrew at Jesus’s baptism (Jn 1:35-40); he follows Jesus into the High Priest’s courtyard (Jn 18:15); he is at the foot of the cross with Jesus’s mother (Jn 19:25-27); and he is first to the tomb on Easter Sunday (Jn 20:2-8). And finally, just as the Gospel of John’s author/narrator claims an eyewitness connection to the story he is telling (Jn 19:35; 21:24-25), so also Pasolini’s film is tinged with autobiographical moments. He casts his own mother in the role of the adult Jesus’s mother, and his own lover, Ninetto Davoli, as the occasion for Jesus’s aphorism on true greatness (1.17:23; see also 2.15:55).

Beyond the biopic canon The demise of the Hays Code in 1968 presented directors with new possibilities for exploring the Jesus tradition. No longer hobbled by the Code’s strictures on religious decency, directors reimagined the Jesus story for baby boomers skeptical of their parents’ organized religion. In 1973 two films based on youth-oriented rock musicals portrayed the Jesus story in a contemporary world. David Greene’s Godspell was set in an empty New York City; Jesus Christ Superstar was set in the modern state of Israel— complete with Israeli jet fighters and attack tanks. Like hypothetical Q, Godspell begins with the preaching of John the Baptist (although it is from Mk 1:3, rather than Q’s apocalyptic opening [Mt. 3:7-10; Lk. 3:79]). Also in contrast to Q, Godspell includes a passion narrative—although it is only tenuously connected to Jesus’s sayings that precede it.



The First Seventy Years of Jesus Films

89

The hypothetical sayings source Q disappears after Luke and Matthew incorporate it, only to reappear as the Gospel of Thomas in the mid-second century. So also Godspell is essentially left untouched by the Jesus film tradition until it reappears in the 2006 Jezile (Son of Man) (for a comparison of the films, see Staley 2013a). Like Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar was released in 1973. Where Godspell reanimates a sayings gospel, Jesus Christ Superstar revives the passion gospel. Unlike Godspell¸ Jesus Christ Superstar depends heavily on precursors—most notably, Il vangelo secondo Matteo (1964) and to a lesser extent on The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) and The King of Kings (1927). Thereby, Jesus Christ Superstar confirms the precursors’ “canonical” status. Jewison returns to DeMille’s Judas/Mary Magdalene/ Jesus triangle, as is visually evident when Mary anoints Jesus (19:17) and lyrically evident in “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” which both Mary Magdalene and Judas sing on different occasions. Jesus Christ Superstar extensively quotes Il vangelo secondo Matteo and thereby legitimates that film within the Hollywood canon, helping to secure its status beyond elite art critics and theologians. Jewison’s most dramatic reinscription of Pasolini’s film can be found in Judas’s death (see Figures 6.3 and 6.4). Beginning at the 1.23:20 point with Judas throwing down the thirty pieces of silver, and culminating with his barechested suicide (hanging himself from a lone tree) four minutes and thirty seconds later, Jewison mimics Pasolini’s film almost frame by frame (compare Il vangelo secondo Matteo, 2.00:36-2.02:33).

Figure 6.3  The death of Judas in Il vangelo secondo Matteo (1964).

90

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Figure 6.4  The death of Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar (1973).

Conclusion My brief survey of the first seventy years of Jesus movies compares that history to questions of canon construction. Analogous to scholarly hypotheses regarding the formation of oral traditions, the earliest Jesus films circulated anonymously were often the products of women’s craft, and continually underwent transformation. A sort of proto-Mark, From the Manger to the Cross (1912) stabilized the early cinematic Jesus by grounding his story in the Holy Land of James Tissot’s Life of Christ paintings. Although Olcott’s influence upon subsequent Jesus films would be largely forgotten (similar to the debatable value of a hypothetical proto-Mark), Olcott’s influence is evident in The King of Kings (1927), the film that functions as Mark’s Gospel for the cinematic canon—not only because the boy Mark is a major witness but also because Ray and Stevens repeat DeMille’s unique miracle sequence. King of Kings (1961) is the cinematic Gospel of Luke with its Roman centurion, Lucius, functioning as its traditional Gentile author; and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), the third film in this cinematic synoptic sequence, functions as the Gospel of John (not Matthew), with its opening quote from the Johannine prologue, with the roles given to Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, and with its high Christology. Pasolini’s Il vangelo secondo Matteo (1964) plays the Johannine role of “maverick gospel” to Hollywood’s synoptics—with its careful adherence to a single gospel (in contrast to the harmonizing tendencies of previous Jesus films) and its eschewal of biopic/epic techniques. Finally, with the demise of the Hays Code (1968), Hollywood turns to the hypothetical documentary roots of the Jesus story, in 1973, with the countercultural Godspell (Q) and Jesus Christ Superstar (a pre-gospel passion narrative). The latter, ironically, secures Pasolini’s place in the cinematic canon. If these two



The First Seventy Years of Jesus Films

91

countercultural films “settled” the canonical parameters of the cinematic Jesus, the next thirty years of Jesus films was largely a rejection of that same canon (most evident in Monty Python’s Life of Brian [1979], Jesus of Nazareth [1977], and Jésus de Montréal [Jesus of Montreal 1989]). Notably, it was The Passion of the Christ (2004) with its portrayals of Judas, Herod Antipas, the Jewish priesthood, and Pilate that returned to the earlier cinematic Jesus canon. By a very different route, Son of Man (2006) returned as well.

Notes 1 Alain Boillat and Valentine Robert write that the 1899 version contained sixteen tableaux or scenes; a 1902 version contained thirty-two; a 1907 version contained thirty-seven; and the 1913 version contained forty-three tableaux or scenes (2016: 27). 2 If Guy is thinking of the anointing story in Luke 7, rather than John 12 (church tradition conflated the two anointing women since at least the fifth century), that Lukan scene precedes the Lukan triumphal entry by eleven chapters. Moreover, it is children rather than women who play the prominent role in Guy’s “Palm Sunday” scene. Her Mary Magdalene is not visibly present. 3 Not surprisingly, the Sermon on the Mount is missing from The King of Kings (1927). However, that Q tradition is prominent in both King of Kings (1961) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). 4 Symbolically, a “blind Jew” (with an eyepatch) appears first at 11:33 and is in the background for nearly two minutes. 5 Challenges to the Christian interpretation of Jesus’s miracles come later when Lucius gives Pilate a written report of Jesus’s activities (1.08:05). 6 Old Aram appears first at 1.36:48, then again at 1.39:09, where the Nazareth villagers tell Jesus to heal Aram. However, the miracle does not actually occur until 1.43:53.

Works cited Boillat, Alain, and Valentine Robert (2016), “La Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur JésusChrist (1902-05),” in David Shepherd (ed.), The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (18971927), Studies in Religion and Film, 24–59, New York: Routledge. Brant, Jo-Ann (2016), “La Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (Pathé Frères 1913-14): Pathé’s Inclination to Tell and Maître’s Instinct to Show,” in David Shepherd (ed.), The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927), Studies in Religion and Film, 158–78, New York: Routledge. Burkett, Delbert (2004), Rethinking the Gospel Sources: From Proto-Mark to Mark, Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda (2016), “The Shadow of Nazareth (Venus Features/Warner Features, 1913): The Hermeneutics of an Unauthorized Adaptation,” in David Shepherd (ed.), The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927), Studies in Religion and Film, 132–57, New York: Routledge. Crossan, John Dominic (1998), The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.

92

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Foster, Diana (2014), “The History of Silent Movies and Subtitles,” Video Caption Corporation. Available online: http://www.vicaps.com/blog/history-of-silent-moviesand-subtitles/ (accessed December 8, 2016). Friesen, Dwight H. (2016), “La Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ (Pathé Frères, 1907): The Preservation and Transformation of Zecca’s Passion,” in David Shepherd (ed.), The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927), Studies in Religion and Film, 78–97, New York: Routledge. Gaines, Jane, with additional research by Elisa Lleras (2013), “Pioneers: Jeanie MacPherson,” in Women Film Pioneers Project. Available online: https://wfpp.cdrs. columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-jeanie-macpherson/ (accessed December 2, 2016). Page, Matt (2015), “The Seven Ages of Bible Films,” Bible Films Blog. Available online: http://biblefilms.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/the-seven-ages-of-bible-films.html (accessed December 4, 2016). Self, Andrew Edward (2016), “The Cult of Criterion: The Criterion Collection as a Commercial Canon,” M.A. Thesis, University of Texas, Austin. Available online: https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/39285 (accessed December 6, 2016). Shepherd, David (2016), “La Naissance, la vie et la mort du Christ (Gaumont, 1906): The Gospel According to Alice Guy,” in David Shepherd (ed.), The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927), Studies in Religion and Film, 60–77, New York: Routledge. Staley, Jeffrey L. (2013a), “What Hath New York City to Do with Khayelitsha? An Intertextual Reading of Two Jesus Films,” in Richard Walsh, Jeffrey L. Staley, and Adele Reinhartz (eds.), Son of Man: An African Jesus Film, The Bible in the Modern World 52, 95–109, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Staley, Jeffrey L. (2013b), “Why Use Jesus Movies When Teaching the Synoptic Gospels?” Bulletin for the Study of Religion, 42 (4): 37–43. Staley Jeffrey L., and Richard Walsh (2007), Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination: A Handbook to Jesus on DVD, Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Tatum, W. Barnes (2013), Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years, 3rd ed., Salem: Polebridge. Tissot, James (n.d.), “The Youth of Jesus,” Wikimedia Commons. Available online: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category: The_Life_of_Christ_by_James_Tissot (accessed December 2, 2016). Walsh, Richard (2003), Reading the Gospels in the Dark: Portrayals of Jesus in Film, Harrisburg: Trinity Press International.

DVDs referenced The Greatest Story Ever Told (2001), MGM Home Entertainment. The King of Kings (2004), Criterion. King of Kings (2003), Warner Home Video. Il vangelo secondo Matteo (2003), Waterbearer.

7

Justice, Empire, and Nature: Deliverance, Covenant, and New Creation in East Asian Cinema Sze-kar Wan

I consider in this chapter three sets of films from East Asia: Park Chan-wook’s vengeance trilogy from South Korea, three Chinese historical epics, and three representative animes by Hayao Miyazaki. They disclose visions of justice, empire, and nature that are understandably different from the biblical views, but in the final analysis they also reveal surprising points of convergence with the biblical ideas of deliverance, covenant, and creation.

Justice and deliverance: Park Chan-wook’s vengeance trilogy (South Korea) In a scene made unbearable more by insinuation than by visual gore, a father watches the autopsy of his young daughter. We see none of the operation, only the father’s anguished face, as he refuses to look away from the small body being dismembered, as the screech of a medical saw fills the air. This is a pivotal scene in Park Chanwook’s 2002 Boksuneun naui geot (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance),1 the first film in his vengeance trilogy. As the film descends into more depraved violence, Park depicts a closed universe of deserts and retribution. In Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, we first meet Ryu, a laid-off, deaf-mute factory worker, trying to buy a black-market kidney for his deathly ill sister. After Ryu gives up his own kidney in exchange for one his sister can use, the organ dealers disappear with the kidney and his severance money. Unable to pay for a kidney when one becomes available through the hospital, Ryu conspires with his girlfriend to kidnap his former boss’s young daughter for a ransom. The plan goes awry, however, ending in the sister’s suicide and the girl’s accidental drowning. Thereafter, cycles of revenge overlap each other until all protagonists receive their deserts. The father locates Ryu’s girlfriend and electrocutes her, while Ryu bludgeons the shady organ dealers to death. Ryu tries to trap the father, but Park’s logic of vengeance dictates that the father kill Ryu in the

94

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

same river where the little girl drowned. The revenge cycles draw to a close only when the father, the avenger himself, is stabbed to death by anarchists avenging the death of Ryu’s girlfriend. The Korean title of the film, “Vengeance is Mine” (Boksuneun naui geot), is taken from the parting Song of Moses (Deut. 32:1-43), which is structured as a covenant that promises Israel blessings and curses alike (Urbrock 1992: 757). The enemies of Israel might boast of their might (32:28-33), but they are nothing more than mere instruments used for the chastisement of Israel (32:19-27). They will be vanquished in due course to vindicate God’s people: “Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip; because the day of their calamity is at hand, their doom comes swiftly. Indeed the Lord will vindicate his people, have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone, neither bond nor free remaining” (32:35-36).2 The theological assumption underpinning the covenant is that God is the author of life and death: “There is no god besides me. I kill and make alive; I wound and heal. . . . I will take vengeance on my adversaries, and will repay those who hate me” (32:39, 41). In an interview, Park says the film was inspired by the biblical view that God delivers the Jewish people by avenging their enemies (Jung 2002).3 Little of the theme of deliverance is in evidence in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, however. Park constructs a closed universe based strictly on moral calculus: those driven to avenge evil with evil are themselves destroyed in the process. Ryu and his conspirator repay the little girl’s death with their lives, and the organ dealers pay for their perfidy that causes the loss of two innocent lives with violent deaths. Even the avenger himself, the father who executes his daughter’s killers out of grief, must pay with his own life in this retributive universe. Every death must be accounted for before universal justice is restored. This moral calculus reappears in Park’s 2003 Oldeuboi (Oldboy). Based on the Japanese manga of the same title (Tsuchiya and Minegishi [1996–98] 2014) and borrowing liberally from Oedipus Rex, Oldboy chronicles a revenge decades in the making. On the night of his four-year-old daughter’s birthday, the drunken Oh Dae-su wakes up in a windowless room where he is held captive for fifteen years without knowing why or who his captor is. He plots his revenge during the long imprisonment, committing to memory every detail of his cell, the guards’ voices, even the pot stickers he is served every meal. He transforms his body into a fighting machine through martial arts. He keeps a meticulous diary, spanning volumes as time goes on, entitled “All matters must be rectified.” This sets the scene for a three-act drama of revenge. Act I begins with Oh finding himself suddenly released with no explanation, although his captor continues communication with him through a mobile phone. He falls in love with young sushi chef Mi-do who takes him in while he looks for his longlost daughter. Oh succeeds in locating the private prison where he was held and—after beating back a phalanx of prison guards and pulling out fifteen of the warden’s teeth, one for each year of his imprisonment—learns that he was held for “talking too much.” The mystery deepens in Act II when Oh meets his captor Lee but still does not know how he might have offended him. Lee proposes a wager: he will kill himself if Oh can figure out his offense, but he will kill Mi-do if Oh fails. Oh eventually remembers the casual gossip he started in high school after witnessing a tryst between Lee and his own sister, which led to the sister’s suicide and planted in Lee the seed of revenge.



Justice, Empire, and Nature

95

In the final act, Oh discovers, to his horror, that Mi-do is his own daughter and that Lee’s revenge is to make Oh have incestuous relations with his daughter. Oh implores Lee never to disclose this to Mi-do and shears off his own tongue as surety. The film ends with Lee killing himself, while Oh lives in the twilight of forgetfulness and silent bitterness and Mi-do, without knowledge of Oh’s identity, declares her love for him. Some critics have called Oldboy a study of the darkness of the human heart (Ebert 2005). That it is, but this darkness is based on a tightly wound moral calculus that has no room for forgiveness. All evil deeds are repaid in full: the suicide of Lee’s sister is repaid with Lee’s own suicide; Oh’s loose tongue is cut off; and Lee’s affair with his sister is replicated with Oh’s relationship with his own daughter. Justice is preserved, but deliverance is missing. The last film in the trilogy, the 2005 Chinjeolhan geumjassi (Lady Vengeance), finally sounds a note of deliverance. For the first time, the avenger is a woman who displays not only the range of emotions represented by the men of the first two films (rage, grief, cunning, lust), but also guilt, empathy, and love. The eponymous Lee Geum-ja, imprisoned for the murder of a kidnapped boy, seeks revenge against the man who forced her to make a false confession. The opening scene teases us with a glimpse of deliverance, as the newly released Geum-ja is offered a fresh block of tofu, symbolizing repentance and rehabilitation, which she refuses. There can be no forgiveness before the restoration of moral balance. Like Oh in Oldboy, Geum-ja plots her revenge while in jail, using her charm to befriend inmates useful to her cause, thus earning her the nickname “the kind-hearted Geum-ja,” the film’s Korean title. She discovers the real killer is a serial kidnapper, a teacher who has lured many children to their deaths. Instead of dispatching him herself as she has long dreamed, Geum-ja gathers parents of the murdered children to take part in a group execution. The execution restores moral balance to a universe perversely distorted by the children’s killings, but, as in the first two films, the revenge brings no relief to the executioners. As she celebrates her revenge, Geum-ja hallucinates the murdered boy, now an adult, who grants her no absolution. The cycles of revenge are broken and grace intimated only at the very end, when Geum-ja asks her young daughter to take the block of fresh tofu she refused at the film’s beginning so she can “live white,” that is, lead a life of innocence and purity. Retribution exacts a toll. The avenging father transforms himself into a killer, Oh ends up destroying his own life and his daughter’s when he seeks revenge for a long imprisonment, and Geum-ja is racked by constant remorse. Like Greek tragedies, these three films propose that the human obsession for retribution empowers fate with terrifying destructiveness. Deliverance does not come from the police or any legal institution, which are depicted as inept, weak, and corrupt. The Christian church fares even worse. In Lady Vengeance, the pastor preaches cheap grace, offers an empty path to redemption, and even collaborates with the killer for a profit; it is entirely consistent with his character when Geum-ja is able to manipulate him to secure her early release. Instead, deliverance and grace are found only in those unsullied by revenge and those willing to accept forgiveness. The Song of Moses similarly depicts a moral order of universal justice, but instead of locating its maintenance in and through transactional human revenge that is

96

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

calculating, unforgiving, and unyielding, it reveals an active and creative God who exacts revenge inasmuch as he delivers. “Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord, because it belongs to a jealous God who will “vindicate his people, have compassion on his servants” (Deut. 32:36). It is precisely this conception of divine participation in justice that prompts Paul to exhort his readers not to seek human vengeance but to treat their enemies with kindness and “[to] overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:19-21). The same conception underlies the warning by the author of Hebrews against persistence in sin (Heb. 10:26-31). Park’s last installment in the trilogy is gesturing toward the same conclusion.

Empire and covenant: Three historical epics (China) The three films from China discussed here are all historical epics. Instead of Park’s moral universe, they reflect a history dominated by bureaucracy and corruption. The 2002 Yingxiong (Hero) is directed by the famous Zhang Yimou, whose credits include Honggaoliang (Red Sorghum 1987), Dahong denglong gaogaogua (Raise the Red Lantern 1991), Huozhe (To Live 1994), as well as the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Known for their stunning visual beauty, Zhang’s earlier films focus on the grittiness of the Chinese people and their will to survive.4 With Hero, however, he turns his attention to the king of Qin, China’s first emperor and the archetypal tyrant of Chinese history. The film follows the king’s protracted conversation with a would-be assassin, Nameless, as the latter recounts how he disarmed all other assassins to earn his audience with the king. After the film presents competing accounts of Nameless’s exploits in a manner worthy of Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950), Nameless confesses that he has in fact conspired with the others to put himself in a position to assassinate the king. The film is based on a well-known failed assassination attempt of the king of Qin; the suspense lies in why it fails. The audience learns that Nameless has been told to spare the king because the peace of the world (tianxia)5 depends on him. He alone can unify the warring states and end perpetual warfare. At the critical moment, Nameless gives himself up to spare the king’s life. While Nameless might seem the hero, the film suggests the first emperor is the real hero for attaining unification. In the world of Hero, history justifies tyranny. An individual like Nameless might seem autonomous, but history dictates his choices. Since killing the king would condemn the world to recurrent chaos and violence, he is left with a choice between the gratification that comes from having eliminated a hated figure and the destruction of countless souls. Since the audience is well aware that the historical king of Qin lived to complete the unification, Nameless is in reality confronted with a choice between a self that is doomed to fail and a history that has already declared its winner. So constructed, individualism is equated with selfishness, while a stable order guaranteed by historical success becomes the only criterion that matters.6 Nowhere is individual powerlessness more starkly presented than in the 2007 Toumingzhuang (Warlords), another epic loosely based on historical events. The film chronicles the rise of three brothers from village bandits to government magistrates



Justice, Empire, and Nature

97

and their ultimate demise. With reference to the classical novel Shuihuzhuan (Water Margin), the three brothers swear a blood-oath by each taking an innocent life as pledge. The oath, toumingzhuang, binds the brothers to each other, though in practice their loyalty is severely compromised by a Qing government more interested in reining in powerful warlords than in strengthening its defense against the Taiping rebellion (1850–64). Pang, the eldest of the three, starts out as a Qing general but, after surviving a devastating battle that wiped out all his troops, joins his two brothers to form a private army.7 The successes of their early campaign lead to the triumvirate’s recognition by the Qing government. But when Pang and his band attack Suzhou and Nanjing, seats of Taiping power, the government withholds reinforcement and supplies. The siege of Suzhou drags on for a year and devastates the Taipings and the besiegers alike. When Suzhou finally falls, the three are split by a choice between military success and keeping faith with their principles: either keep the terms of surrender by providing food for the prisoners of war but leave their own troops with inadequate provisions, or execute the prisoners. The brothers might feel they are trapped in a moral cul-de-sac, but the audience knows a wary state has imposed this choice upon them. Their mission is doomed from the start. More important, the state forces the brothers to betray their blood-oath of absolute faithfulness to each other, thus striking a mortal blow to the very foundation of their alliance. As the film unfolds, the brothers turn on each other with treachery until their oath is dissolved in their deaths. As in Hero, the Chinese state depicted in Warlords permits no escape and leaves no room for individuals, no matter how powerful they are. This film, however, leaves open a possibility that a covenant between like-minded persons could stand up to the state’s oppressive force. Given that the film was produced in Hong Kong, a former British colony that came under Chinese rule reluctantly, Peter Chan, the Hong Kong-born and American-trained director, may be holding out a note of dissent, if not a hope for reform, for his fellow citizens. The 2014 Xiuchundao (Brotherhood of Blades) is a full-throated defense of just such a possibility. Set toward the end of the Ming Dynasty, the film follows three members of the imperial secret police who form a brotherhood. The three are ordered to hunt down and execute a eunuch fleeing for his life after a failed palace intrigue. Instead of carrying out the execution, Shen Lian, the second of the three brothers, accepts a bribe and spares the eunuch’s life without informing his brothers. He intends to use the money to free a courtesan who was sold into the imperial brothel when he arrested her entire family. By keeping his brothers in the dark, Shen sows the seed of their demise; nevertheless, by striking out on his own and disregarding the sinister order, he succeeds not only in claiming personal agency but also in ushering in the corrupt regime’s fall. This film depicts a stark disparity between the ruling elites and their lower functionaries who have no choice but to follow orders, no matter how capricious and unjust they are. Theirs is not to ask why. The secret police are expected to act like obedient killing machines forbidden to exercise their own moral judgment. Against such a background, we can appreciate Shen’s action as a salve for his own conscience. In reclaiming his own moral agency, he rejects the imperial court’s monopoly on truth

98

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

and morality. The film makes clear that Shen’s success in exposing and defeating the evildoers is due in no small part to his brothers’ commitment to him, even after he confesses his deceit. Whether the brothers understand the complex motives that drive Shen to take the bribe is not clear, but their sworn brotherhood, which moves them to die for him, is unequivocal. Park Chan-wook’s vengeance trilogy locates morality in a transactional order that hovers over actors but does not negate their free will. By contrast, these three Chinese historical epics locate the moral order in history or, more accurately, in historically realized regimes that define what is moral expediently. Individual moral autonomy is incompatible with such an order: a hero gives himself up for sake of the historical order (Nameless) or imposes autocratic rule for the sake of stability (king of Qin), while individual ambitions clash with the establishment and bring destruction (Pang). The only possible challenge to this absolute order is mounted by a sworn, selfless brotherhood.8 Similar strategies of resistance can be found in the Pauline letters. In his letter to the slave-owner Philemon, Paul has been read as tacitly endorsing the Roman status quo by persuading the runaway slave Onesimus to return to his master (see Noll 2006: 33–36), but modern scholarship has uncovered a more subversive move encoded in this text. In counseling Philemon to receive Onesimus back “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother” (Phlm. 16), and in making that request before the whole congregation meeting in his house (compare Phlm. 2), Paul presents Philemon with a stark choice: either side with the Roman legal system, which entitles the master to severely punish a runaway slave, or uphold a new alternative community that is based on a covenant of love (Phlm. 5, 7, 9), a community in which members relate to each other as brothers and sisters (Phlm. 1, 2, 7, 16) (see Petersen 1985; Lewis 2007). Paul might not be in a position to dismantle the Roman slavery system, but he is building a countercultural “brotherhood” movement that directly challenges the inhumanity of the imperial system.

Nature as new creation: The divine vision of Hayao Miyazaki (Japan) Hayao Miyazaki is one of the most revered animation directors in the world (Ebert 2002). From his fecund mind flow films of artistry and uncommon depth. Relying on hand-drawn, two-dimensional techniques for his animation until only recently, Miyazaki imbues his films with painterly beauty and populates them with memorable characters. His films are cast in a medium that can be easily dismissed by those unfamiliar with Japanese manga as cartoonish, but while the main protagonists in the three films considered here are all young adults, girls in fact, there is nothing childish about them. The anime medium allows the filmmaker to explore themes that are otherwise impossible in live-action films. It is probably more accurate to say that Miyazaki’s films are really intended for those who refuse to limit their imagination to jaded adulthood or their spirituality to one-dimensional materialism.



Justice, Empire, and Nature

99

The three animes discussed here highlight several common themes. All three feature young girls as protagonists who save the day by their sheer endurance, character, and self-sacrifice. The antagonists are generally beclouded by greed, misjudgment, or even a misguided sense of loyalty to their own selfless causes, but are otherwise redeemable. In these as well as in many Miyazaki’s films there are no villains, only potential allies. All characters, even when they commit regrettable deeds, are morally neutral. While Miyazaki’s films might be categorized as fantasies, they are set in real space and time, a world hidden by the materialism of quotidian life. At the most visible level, these films expose a materialism that ails modern society with its pursuit of hedonism, success, and power. At a less obvious level, they reject a materialism that robs nature of its true life and spirit by denying its sacrality, indeed its divinity. Western critics in their unconscious Christian assumptions mistake such a view of nature as primitive animism. On the contrary, the religious dimension of Miyazaki’s films is a sophisticated veneration of nature, the landscape, and the earth itself. According to Miyazaki, this understanding of a “spiritual landscape” is endemic to the Japanese and their land: “In the very inner depth of our nation, there is a forbidden space that is extremely clean, and there abundant water flows and protects the inner deep forest. I myself intensely have a religious feeling which says the most wonderful thing is that humans go back to this kind of clean space” (cited in Ogihara-Schuck 2014: 106); “what we believe is that inside the dense forest something holy exists” (cited in Ogihara-Schuck 2014: 41). This concept of the divine is perfectly depicted in his 1984 Kaze no tani no Naushika (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind), in which an underground petrified forest filters out environmental toxins in the water and in the air, thereby protecting all animal and human lives from extinction in a postnuclear wasteland. A divine wind (kamikaze) blowing in from the ocean keeps the smog of destruction at bay and protects the Valley of the Wind. Life’s continuation therefore depends exclusively on the inner workings of nature. In his 1997 Mononokehime (Princess Mononoke), Miyazaki represents the forest kami (god, spirit, or deity in Japanese) as a nightwalker of superhuman form, but appearing by day as a deer with a wise anthropoid face. It has the power to grant life but also the obligation to extinguish it; it can heal wounds but does not change fate. It is indifferent to good and evil, even life and death, choosing to heal some but not others with no explanation given or expected. Left unexplained, for example, is why it refuses to heal a wounded boar allowing it to become a demon god but brings a wolf king back to life. The magical forest in Princess Mononoke is alive with shimmering tree sprites, sparkling fairies, and talking animals of all shapes and sizes, but they all depend on the forest kami for life and sustenance. As soon as the forest kami loses its head, they die with it. For Miyazaki the landscape is so divine he calls it kami. While in Shintoism kami refers to the abstract numinous quality of places and things, Miyazaki goes beyond that by identifying kami with human beings, animals, inanimate objects, even the land. Indeed, Miyazaki has described kami in anthropomorphic terms, likening them to “really modest people” (cited in Ogihara-Schuck 2014: 46). Unlike the anthropomorphic Christian God, however, who is above humans who are themselves above nature in a strictly hierarchical order, Miyazaki’s kami includes humanity in its divinity. Because of this all-encompassing quality, kami cannot be caged in “glittery shrines” as was the

100

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

case when Shintoism was co-opted into and subsumed under nationalism in wartime Japan. Kami are situated “deep in the mountains and valleys,” embracing anything and all things—human beings, animals, trees and shrubs, rocks and streams, ghosts and spirits (cited in Ogihara-Schuck 2014: 47). One consequence of this view of nature as kami is that all creatures are equals. In Nausicaä, the giant Ohms appear to fit the description of the proverbial monsters that threaten civilization’s existence. Indeed, in the first scene that introduces the creatures, an Ohm, with its compound eyes in red fury, chases a lone traveler. But the Ohms live in a symbiotic harmony with human beings, a harmony upset only by greed and naked ambition. At the end it is the heroine Nausicaä’s sacrifice of herself to save a baby Ohm that restores peace and understanding between the species. Throughout the narrative—aptly depicted in the Japanese poster for the film—Nausicaä stands next to and in equal partnership with an Ohm, and they both stand with a nature that is being safeguarded and continually purified by an underground forest that maintains equilibrium in the world.9 The comprehensive inclusivity of kami enables Miyazaki to blur the line between all creatures. Dust-bunnies, first appearing in the 1998 Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro), are not just annoying soot found in an old house, but thinking, feeling, and even scheming characters that are willing to work for food if enlisted. In the 2001 Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited Away), gods and spirits can assume human and animal forms and human beings can turn into animals. Earth itself, along with its mountains, forests, rivers, and landscape, is alive and can feel pain if hurt, depression if diseased, and elation if healed. Rivers and streams are kami who must endure all the pollution left by thoughtless humans but can be cleansed, healed, and restored to their former selves. This interchangeability is possible, because all beings, including both human beings and spirits, are understood to coexist in the same space and time. The ten-year-old Chihiro becomes trapped in the gods’ world after her parents have been turned into animals, but this world occupies the same space and assumes the same structure as the human world. It is precisely the indistinguishability between the two worlds that lures Chihiro’s parents into a trap. In this regard, the nonreligious English title “Spirited Away” misrepresents the film. The Japanese title’s kamikakushi, “hidden by the gods,” describes it more accurately (Ogihara-Schuck 2014: 99). In the spirit world, humans, animals, gods, and even shades all coexist together: they interact with each other and relate to each other with the normal range of emotions; they eat the same food and breath the same air; they even ride the same train together. This is just as true in the human world. On the way to their new home, Chihiro asks what the roadside shrines are and is told that the kami live in them. The kami live also in the human world. Miyazaki’s spirit realm is not a parallel world that requires magic to enter; all are part of the “natural” order of kami. The equality among all beings in kami is also what enables Miyazaki’s films to present a world that rises above the Manichean dualism of good and evil. There are no bad or good guys, only those who clash with each other out of competing claims of goodness. The complex figure of the ruler of Iron Town, Lady Eboshi, in Princess Mononoke is a perfect illustration. The Town’s destruction of the forest and habitats for iron ore might



Justice, Empire, and Nature

101

set Eboshi up as the archetypal villain, yet her industry employs women who have been abused, giving them livelihood and dignity, and even leadership positions over against their husbands. She cares for social outcasts like lepers while tapping into their engineering and creative prowess. At the end, even as she succeeds in killing the forest god and ushers in an environmental disaster that destroys Iron Town, she remains the proud leader of a ragtag band of loyalists who see only unmitigated good in her actions. Even the young prince who tries to broker peace between Iron Town and the forest decides to reside there to help rebuild it. In spite of Judeo-Christian teaching of human domination of nature, Paul’s attitude toward creation has many points of contact with Miyazaki’s veneration of nature. Creation, personified, is said to be “eagerly [anticipating] the revelation of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:19). Here “revelation” indicates God’s final act of establishing a righteous and just reign (Dunn 1988: 470). Since the opening statement in Romans asserts that the righteousness of God is already revealed in the proclamation of the gospel (Rom. 1:17), the righteousness of God is therefore both a present reality and an imminent event. Creation “groans together and suffers together in birth pangs until now” (Rom. 8:22). Unlike Miyazaki, Paul does not view nature as divine or free, but as a part of a creation that has been involuntarily subjected to futility and must be liberated from its bondage to decay (Rom. 8:20-21; Dunn 1988: 470). The future passive eleutherōthēsetai and the first fruits (Rom. 8:21, 23) both point to the end time when death and decay that entered creation (Gen. 3:16-19) will be undone and reversed. To present creation as groaning for redemption is to reject the premise that the Augustan golden age was inaugurated by the Secular Games of 17 BCE or that Nero ushered in a “golden age of untroubled peace” (Jewett 2007: 517). Against Roman belief, Paul rejects the notion that creation could determine the success of the imperial order or that it can be redeemed by powerful figures. As portrayed in Nausicaä, the naked ambitions of kings and queens will alter the delicate balance of nature and cause its downfall, not redemption. For Paul, accordingly, the eschaton will not restore human dominion over creation (contra Jewett 2007: 519–20); rather, with Miyazaki Paul affirms that nature suffers from human abuse but will be restored to its proper place as an equal to the children of God, for just as creation yearns for liberation from decay, human beings yearn for the redemption of their bodies (Rom. 8:23).

Conclusion The three sets of films from East Asia present relatively closed systems in the moral universe (Korea), political arena (China), and natural world (Japan). Park Chan-wook’s vengeance trilogy operates in a universe based on transactional moral calculus, the Chinese historical epics assume the inevitability of historical empires, and Miyazaki’s animes introduce a nature that regulates and renews itself against human exploits. Yet, these films all gesture toward values encoded in the biblical texts in spite of their different worldviews. The endless cycles of revenge ultimately prove unsatisfactory to Park, and he is compelled to consider grace and forgiveness. Resistance against the historical determinism of the Chinese imperial system takes place in the blood

102

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

loyalty of brotherhood, moving it closer to the biblical notion of covenantal love. And Miyazaki’s kami nature might not admit of a personal, transcendent God, but its divinity is one of inclusivity, embracing human beings and maintaining equality with them in the same way Paul describes creation groaning with us for redemption. At the same time, the biblical texts take on a slightly different character when read in conjunction with these films from East Asia. These films attest to the need to take seriously human agency and our participation in impersonal forces, be they moral, historico-political, or natural. Only then can we bring a much-need corrective to the common reading of the Bible that bypasses human responsibility.

Notes 1 Park’s English title may allude to the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil,” which includes the following lines: “Just as every cop is a criminal/And all the sinners saints/ As heads is tails/Just call me Lucifer/’Cause I’m in need of some restraint.” I owe Mr. Hyun Sang-Soo for this and other references to Korean publications on Park Chan-wook. 2 Biblical quotations are from the NRSV. 3 In the article Sungil Jung refers to an interview of Park by Sangsoo Lee that appeared in the March 22, 2002 edition of the newspaper Hankooreh. I owe this reference to Mr. Hyun Sang-Soo. 4 They tell tales of survival through the Sino-Japanese War (Red Sorghum), of the patriarchy of the old culture (Raise the Red Lantern), and of the murderous chaos of the Cultural Revolution (To Live). 5 Tianxia, literally “under heaven,” historically referred to China proper but was initially rendered as “the world” in the English subtitle, only later as “the land.” 6 Unsurprisingly, many critics suggest that Hero is an apology for the modern state of China. 7 The Chinese and English versions of the film differ on the sequence of events that lead to the formation of the private army. 8 It is perhaps no accident that Confucianism, the official ideology of imperial China, never developed a strong notion of covenant. Covenantal communities like those found in Brotherhood of the Blades and Warlords are much more prevalent in popular romances and religious sects. See Wan (2002). 9 A comparison of the posters produced in Japan and those in the United States and Germany shows how Judeo-Christian assumptions influence Western presentation of the films. See Ogihara-Schuck (2014: 70–149).

Works cited Dunn, James D. G. (1988), Romans 1–8, Word Biblical Commentary, Dallas: Word. Ebert Roger (2002), “Hayao Miyakzai Interview,” September 12. Available online: http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/hayao-miyazaki-interview (accessed February 23, 2017).



Justice, Empire, and Nature

103

Ebert, Roger (2005), “Oldboy,” March 24. Available online: http://www.rogerebert.com/ reviews/oldboy-2005 (accessed April 8, 2017). Jewett, Robert (2007), Romans, Hermeneia, Minneapolis: Fortress. Jung, Sungil (2002), “Criticism of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance,” Cine 21, 349, April 25. Available online: http://www.cine21.com/news/view/?mag_id=9137 (accessed April 3, 2017). Lee, Sangsoo (2002), “Interview with Park Chan-wook,” Hankooreh Newspaper, March 22. Lewis, Lloyd A. (2007), “Philemon,” in Brian K. Blount, Cain Hope Felder, Clarice J. Martin, and Emerson B. Powery (eds.), True to our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary, 437–43, Minneapolis: Fortress. Noll, Mark (2006), The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Ogihara-Schuck, Eriko (2014), Miyazaki’s Animism Abroad: The Reception of Japanese Religious Themes by American and German Audiences, Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Petersen, Norman R. (1985), Rediscovering Paul: Philemon and the Sociology of Paul’s Narrative World, Philadelphia: Fortress. Tsuchiya, Garon, and Nobuaki Minegishi ([1996–98] 2014), Oldboy, Vol. 8, trans. Kumar Sivasubramanian, Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse Comics. Urbrock, William (1992), “Blessings and Curses,” in David Noel Freedman (ed.), Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 1, 755–61, New York: Doubleday. Wan, Sze-kar (2002), “Christian Contributions to Globalization of Confucianism (Beyond Maoism),” in Max L. Stackhouse (ed.), God and Globalization Volume 3: Christ and the Dominions of Civilization, 173–212, Harrisburg: Trinity Press International.

8

Biographical Approaches to Jesus Films: Prospects for Bible and Film Dwight H. Friesen

Here I shift the focus of inquiry in Bible and film studies away from the well-traveled paths of textual analysis toward a consideration of how Jesus films operate, or are used in daily life. As such, this chapter’s contribution is heuristic, but also methodologically suggestive. My proposal need not be limited to Jesus films. It could be applied to films generally. Briefly, I suggest that by turning a biographical lens on biblically inspired films we may develop a more textured awareness of how Bible films function in daily life and learn what those functions or activities can reveal about how people negotiate the Bible’s significance in daily practice. In short, I presume that lives and objects— like Bibles and films—are entangled. As anthropologist Janet Hoskins once observed, to her surprise: “I could not collect the histories of objects and the life histories of persons separately. People and the things they valued were so completely intertwined they could not be disentangled” (1998: 2). I draw on three intersecting methodological streams to make the case for this biographical approach to film: the growing body of work focused on the social lives of things, studies of religion and media that interrogate the negotiation of religious and media practices, and studies in film reception, particularly of the sort pioneered by Martin Barker and Ernest Mathjis’s Watching the Lord of the Rings (2008). As few social accounts of the lives of films are available, I then review several examples of the social lives of other things. I conclude with a brief biographical case study from my own research on Karunamayudu (1978), an Indian Jesus film.

Biographies of films/making the case Studies of the social lives of things have accumulated over the last couple of decades, but few efforts, if any, have been made to trace the social lives of films. A cursory review of the literature suggests that such an approach is relatively new investigative territory for discussions of film, generally, and for conversations about Bible and film, religion and film, or theology and film, in particular. Consequently, I begin with a brief review of the major premises on which social lives of things are constructed, the impulse for



Biographical Approaches to Jesus Films

105

which, broadly speaking, may well be distilled into the following question: “What is a text, when considered as a social object?” (Couldry 2000: 69). The premise that objects can have social lives is rooted in the discipline of anthropology. Igor Kopytoff, whose essay, “The Cultural Biography of Things,” is oftquoted as a methodological precedent for such studies, bases his argument on the observation that the life cycle of a thing is often tied to the biography of a person or persons (1986: 66). If one were to document the purchase of a car in rural Africa, he says, including its subsequent transfers of ownership, who is allowed to borrow it, and who repairs it, one would gain considerable biographical insight into lives of the persons linked to its history. Its journey from the factory to the scrap yard would be tied inextricably to, and could be said to shape, the biographies, status, and livelihoods of those connected to it (1986: 67). By virtue of its ability to influence the social significance of its owners and users throughout its own life cycle, not to mention its fluid significance in, and influence on, the lives of people, a car can be said to have a social life or a history of its own. Admittedly, the biography of a thing is shaped by the lens through which that history is observed and constructed. Central to Kopytoff ’s argument is the premise that both the negotiations in which a car is involved, and the construction of its biography, turn on the “problem of value and value equivalence,” as determined by a given social or economic context (1986: 71). Therefore, the drama of a biography, whether of a person or a thing, is shaped not only by the exchanges in which it is involved or the persons it is linked to, but also by the complexity of the social context in which those exchanges and life cycles occur. Studying these contexts can help us to grasp how the value of an object is constructed and on what basis it can change. It is not difficult to imagine that films shape, in some cases define, the lives of those who produce, distribute, or encounter them, but we have much to learn about how those influences play out in daily life, or how those influences may shift as a film moves through different social contexts. A second influence is Stewart Hoover’s interrogation of the “layered interconnections between religious symbols, interests, and meanings and the modern media sphere” (2003:1). His work offers an instructive and complementary method to Kopytoff ’s in that he focuses on practices, or more specifically, accounts of the media (Hoover 2003: 14). He and his colleagues have been concerned with analyzing media consumers’ accounts of their media practices in which they “reflexively position themselves historically, socially, and culturally in relation to media practice” (2003: 14), that is, how they describe their own media practices in light of the values or perspectives with which they are familiar or perhaps think are expected of them. Of interest to Hoover are not only the complexities and contradictions that can often be observed between an individual’s description of his media practices and what he actually does, but also what those complex accounts can tell us, in a particular context, about what is at stake in those negotiations (2003: 20). In the case of Jesus films, for example, one might ask what is being negotiated when a person that would otherwise decry graphic violence in media chooses to watch Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004), arguably one of the most graphic cinematic depictions of Jesus’s death. The third approach that informs my proposal is the robust analysis of the reception of Peter Jackson’s cinematic trilogy, The Lord of the Rings (LotR), that was led by Martin

106

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Barker and Ernest Mathjis involving 20,000 questionnaires from twelve countries and employing a multipronged combination of qualitative and quantitative data gathering strategies (2008: 2).1 Their attempt to “catch audience involvements in flight, close to when they are actually taking place, and with attention to all the complexities of where, when, and with what preparations viewing takes place” (2008: 2) produced what is perhaps the most comprehensive study of film reception attempted to date. Not only did the project move beyond textual or cultural analyses of film, the LotR study introduced a novel field of inquiry by attempting to situate reception in relation to the rhetoric and discourses that preceded viewing of the films, how the films were brought to the audiences, the conditions under which they were assessed, the worldviews through which they were evaluated, and the communities of affiliation that shaped their reception (2008: 2). This approach has instructive potential for the study of Jesus films, given the millennia of discourse about the Bible that have preceded their production, the diverse agendas that have informed their creation, and the myriad perspectives on the nature of biblical texts that have been deployed in their evaluation and appropriation. The three approaches briefly summarized above share a common thread, namely an interest in the significance of films in daily life and practice, the negotiations of which, to my mind, can therefore be integrated under the rubric of biography. In the following I will attempt to demonstrate how these approaches may be fruitfully applied to the discussion of Bible and film, even Bible in film, beginning with the Jesus film genre. My proposal, that films, like other objects, can be understood to have social lives, is based on the premise that films are involved in exchanges of value that are constructed in cultural contexts. Admittedly, comparisons between a digital film and an object like a car or heirloom may not be immediately obvious. In the era of celluloid it may have been easier to conceive of a film as an object, but digitalization has rendered films less tangible. That said, it is still the case that films are not only objects of exchange, at times commodities, but are inextricably linked with the biographies of those involved in their construction, distribution, and reception. Therefore, in much the same way that films have been embraced as texts in order to justify subjecting them to all manner of textual criticism, I am arguing that they may also be treated as objects and therefore subject to biographical constructions similar to the accounts anthropologists have produced about objects as diverse as statues, betel bags, cloth, or even photographs. A biographical approach to things, or films, also turns on the recognition that they not only have economic value but are also embedded in, and draw significance from, social networks. As Janet Harbord has argued, “The ‘value’ of a film is produced relationally” (2002: 2). Tracking a film’s shifting economic value is rather straightforward. Distributors may charge more for a ticket to a film’s theatrical release then they will after a four-week run in cinemas, or when it becomes available as a digital download. By contrast, the social significance of films requires an understanding of the relational networks in which they are circulated or censored. As director Martin Scorsese discovered with The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), in spite of his Catholic upbringing and a strong, albeit conflicted, engagement with Christianity throughout his career, creating a nontraditional account of a biblical figure, especially Jesus, can lead to accusations of blasphemy and personal attacks from within the Christian



Biographical Approaches to Jesus Films

107

family (see Riley 2003). By contrast, it is somewhat of a truism in the film industry that playing Jesus is a potentially career-limiting decision. James Caviezel reports, for example, that he felt stigmatized in Hollywood as a result of playing Jesus in Mel Gibson’s 2004 The Passion of the Christ (Child 2011). It is not difficult to imagine how films can shape the lives of those involved in producing or distributing them. What is largely missing from the discussion of film is an understanding of how movies shape and are shaped by our interactions with them, and not just during the moments when they are being viewed. Put differently, we know little of how they are deployed or operate in daily life. Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ generated a mini-publishing industry that analyzed everything from its political and theological dynamics to its stylistic influences. Yet, for all the ink that was spilled, not only do we have few insights into the role that it has played, or continues to play, in Gibson’s own history or the contours of his self-identity as a Christian; there is also much work to be done to understand how the film was received and repurposed in a variety of contexts, including, but not limited to, evangelical, Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Arab communities. In other words, we have few accounts of media or bodies of data about actual activities with which to interrogate them. Furthermore, we have yet to learn, on the scale of Barker’s LotR project, about the kinds of negotiations with Bible and film that occur in the consumption of Jesus films. The project proposed here is not meant to encourage more textual analyses by Christian theologians, biblical scholars, and film critics designed to draw parallels between biblical themes and movie narratives or interrogate the historical or theological bent of cinematic adaptations of biblical texts. Those fruitful paths are well traveled. That said, a robust biographical account of a film’s social life cannot avoid critical analyses of its narrative structure, mise-en-scène, style, genre conventions, and so on. Without an intimate knowledge of a film it is difficult to appreciate how viewers engage with it. What fascinates me, however, are the negotiations of Bible and film that occur in daily life, and the interpretive networks, trends, and value structures that might come into sharp relief as a result of interrogating those negotiations. For example, one way to begin teasing out the networks of value and exchange that shape the social significance of Bible and film would be to use ethnographically informed strategies such as guided conversations and semi-structured interviews to observe and inquire about the ways in which films are deployed in daily discourse, devotional practices such as Bible studies, habits of prayer, or acts of witness. The potential benefit of such an approach for discussions of Bible and film is at least twofold: a nuanced account of the competing political, economic, religious, and interpretive influences that inform how people engage with biblical texts in daily life, and an understanding of how the Bible factors in the way people engage with such films.

The Social Lives of Things/biographical precedents Given that few, if any, accounts of the social lives of films are currently available, I will first review briefly some instructive examples of the social lives of things from other

108

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

disciplines. In what is likely the first collection of essays around the topic of The Social Life of Things (1986), editor Arjun Appadurai makes the case for examining the social significance of objects. Included in the collection of essays are accounts of commodities as varied as Indian cloth, Turkish carpets, and qat in Northeastern Africa, each offering broad insights into the negotiations of meaning, social status, and value associated with those products in their communities and histories of exchange. These treatments are a helpful introduction to the argument that objects have social significance, but for the purposes of this chapter a more instructive study is Richard H. Davis’s The Lives of Indian Images (1997) because it offers accounts of individual objects. Davis’s accounts of Indian images are informed by Kopytoff ’s work and framed by two guiding premises. The first is the belief, common to Hindu theology, that religious images are to be treated as animate beings (1997: 7).2 Although Davis recognizes that the attribution of living qualities to religious images may make it easier to imagine them as having social lives, he is also careful to qualify that “one need not believe Hindu theological premises” about the relationship between images and the divinities they represent in order to “accept that Indian religious images are, in some important sense, alive” (1997: 13). Davis’s second premise, an adaptation of Stanley Fish’s theory of “interpretive communities,” is that the meaning of an image—in contrast to a printed text—is generally evaluated in “communities of response” (emphasis added). The difference between the reception of a literary work (often categorized as interpretation) and an object “lies in the relative importance of setting and presentation” entailed in the analysis of images (1997: 9). The setting in which an object is seen is more constitutive of the way in which it is framed than that in which a text is read. While readers and viewers bring to their encounters with both literary works and objects their own frames of reference, viewers bring to their encounters with objects or images not only an interpretive strategy but a more global outlook on the world and the place of images in it (Davis 1997: 9). In either case, however, whether referring to texts or images, Davis proceeds on the premise that communities will tend to interact with texts and images in ways that are learned and transmitted over time and that those interactions will likewise vary by community. Based on those two premises, Davis offers carefully nuanced accounts of the journeys of several Indian religious images, or objects, through a variety of communities of response. In the interest of brevity, I shall mention only two examples. One tale is of a statue that was buried by the Ganges River in Patna, capital of Bihar and Orissa, and discovered by a young man digging for sandstone. Once unearthed, the six-foot piece was carried upriver by locals and installed upright in a makeshift shrine on the assumption that it represented one of the gods in the Hindu pantheon. When a British museum director and a local professor of history confirmed that it was not a deity but an attendant to a deity, and had it shipped to the local Patna Museum, the statue suddenly lost its newfound significance as a goddess and was moved abruptly into a new community of response. In a similar vein, Davis tells the story of a South Indian bronze of the god Siva that was originally a temple deity from the twelfth century but was transported to the National Gallery of Art in Washington for display in a show about Indian sculpture (1997: 15). As Davis points out, in the words of Walter  Benjamin,



Biographical Approaches to Jesus Films

109

its “cult value” was exchanged for its “exhibition value” as a specimen of Indian art (1997: 6): “An Indian image, . . . does not appear to us in a museum the same as it does to Indian worshippers in a temple. The way it is displayed, the frame of surrounding objects, and the expectations the two audiences bring to their encounters with the object differ dramatically” (1997: 17). The two contexts in which the same statue stood corresponded to “ontological and moral premises” that corresponded to each of its audience’s expectations, framed by culturally specific assumptions about what it was and how it should be treated (1997: 21). Whereas in the gallery in Washington it was an artifact stripped of devotional significance, in its original setting it was understood theologically by temple visitors, within “an aesthetics of presence” (1997: 33), as the physical embodiment of Siva and therefore subject to the worship and activities associated with a live being. To limit Davis’s nuanced account to a distinction between two ways of seeing, however, is to overlook the difference in dynamic between the two scenarios, namely that in the temple context it was treated as the divine presence of Siva. As such it was capable of a personal, even emotional, relationship with the devotee, a relationship that conceivably would have played an integral role in the lives of its devotees, and therefore, capable of having a biography (1997: 50). There is a strong parallel here, between the kind of scholarly interest in Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ referred to earlier and the Christian who watches the film during Easter Week as a cinematic equivalent to visiting the stations of the cross. Although much has been written about the film through various lenses informed by textual analysis, little attention has been paid to the frameworks of devotion, authority, and visual culture that shape the Christian devotee’s engagement with the film, especially how those negotiations inform subsequent interactions with biblical texts.3 This general lacuna in film studies may be attributed in part to the intangible quality of films. As cited earlier, Janet Hoskins’s study of Kodi culture in Eastern Indonesia was shaped by the discovery that she could not create human biographies apart from the biographies of the objects that shaped their lives (1998: 2). A broken weaving spindle became the metaphor for unrequited love in the life of a woman whose romantic dreams were shattered by being forced to follow traditional marriage arrangements. Not only was she sexually “broken” by someone other than the man she loved but so were her dreams of being with him. But the spindle was more than a metaphor. According to Hoskins, when an unmarried woman died in Kodi culture, she could be buried with a spindle, a thinly veiled phallic symbol, so that she would not go off into the realm of the spirits incomplete (1998: 168). For that young woman a broken spindle was more than a metaphor, it was her story. In a different vein, Hoskins tells of the untimely, “green,” death of a young woman in a tragic vehicle accident. Locals described the event as death by a green bottle, where the bottle was a metaphor for modernity and the modern machine that killed her. At least, the village bards sang, if a pot was broken, it could be put back together, but shattered glass, a symbol of modernity and mass production, cannot. Hers was a story of death by a green bottle (1998: 167–71). Unlike bottles or spindles, films are less tangible. It may seem a stretch to suggest that films, especially the “sword-and-sandal” epics of the Jesus film genre, could ever develop the powerful associations attributed to the objects described above. Whose story, one might ask, is defined by a Jesus movie?

110

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Has anyone ever been buried with one? It is perhaps difficult to imagine that even as provocative a movie as Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, with all the controversial attention it received, has been so influential in any person’s life to the degree that one could say it was defined by it. Yet, I would argue that there are select cases where a Jesus film may indeed have such biographical significance. Although largely panned by critics, John Krish and Peter Sykes’s Jesus (1979) has become a focal point of daily life for thousands of Christians around the world, many of whom have committed years to the film’s promotion and exhibition as a Christian evangelistic tool. It could not have earned its reputation as one of the most viewed Jesus films of all time without their devoted efforts. Not only have millions seen the movie but tens of thousands have reportedly converted to some form of Christianity after watching it.4 Nevertheless, a carefully constructed account of its influence remains outstanding. It is precisely because Krish and Sykes’s film, as well as the Indian Jesus movie about which I will comment below, have engaged the lives of so many, not just as viewers, that I am proposing Jesus films as prime subjects for the kind of study being proposed here, namely the construction of robust biographies of Jesus films that take into account the various methodologies summarized briefly above. The work of Barker and Mathjis (2008) offers a number of tested qualitative and quantitative strategies for structuring such a project.5 What makes the LotR study so germane as a guide for analyzing the intersection of Bible and film in daily life is the scope of its inquiry, methodologically and geographically, into the cinematic adaptation of a highly regarded text.6 If Barker and company’s analysis is an indicator of the kind of insights to be gained from such a query, the result is likely to be a more nuanced account of Bible and film in daily life than textual analysis, even through a cultural lens, has yet been able to offer.

Toward a social life of a Jesus film/a case study To this point I have been making a case for evaluating the social lives of films, and Jesus films in particular, because of what such a project might reveal about the ways in which people negotiate the relationship between Bible and film in daily life. In the remaining paragraphs I draw on my own research of an Indian Jesus film to provide an example of the kinds of insights that await the sort of analysis proposed here.7 My study of Karunamayudu (1978), an Indian (Telugu) Jesus film, also known as Daya Sagar (Hindi for Ocean of Mercy), was borne initially out of a broad interest in the reception of Jesus films in non-Western contexts. In particular, I was interested in the roles that culture, religion, and local cinematic environments might play in such films’ reception. The constraints of my research narrowed so that I focused on a single movie and I chose to explore the life of an Indian Jesus film titled Karunamayudu (1978).8 Although I employed both qualitative and quantitative methodologies in my research, the scope of the data collected was infinitesimal compared to the LotR study and far less comprehensive in analytical scope. I will limit my observations here to a discussion of the producer, who also played Jesus, and some of the film’s evangelical distributors. When Vijay Chander (a.k.a. Vijaychander) signed on to play Jesus in Karunamayudu, he had no intention of becoming the film’s producer. The film was the brainchild of



Biographical Approaches to Jesus Films

111

two Hindu filmmakers that had approached, and received funding assistance from, a Roman Catholic communications agency to begin the project. Chander was an aspiring action star at the time, not a Christian devotee. The film’s initiators diverted the funds to other projects, however, and production stalled, with the result that the church took ownership of the project, including the existing prints. At that point Chander took responsibility for the film’s production, vowing not to take on another film role until its completion, nearly five years later. As both producer and star, Chander holds a rather unique status in the history of Jesus films, but more importantly for our purposes, it should be noted that the film has made a mark on his biography to date. Not only does he report having experienced a kind of mystical encounter with Jesus that compelled him to take on the role of producing the film, he now considers himself a devotee of Jesus and gives credit to Jesus for directing the film. That said, his relationship to institutional Christianity is highly nuanced. Furthermore, the film’s success established him as somewhat of a film icon in South India, albeit via an altered career trajectory. Instead of becoming an action star, he went on to play other religious figures such as the Apostle Paul (Dayamayudu 1987), Sri Shirdi Sai Baba Mahathyam (1986), Yogi Vemana (1988), and Kabirdas (2003). Yet for millions of Indians that have seen the film in the last thirty years, Chander’s face was the first cinematic representation of Jesus they had encountered, and to date, no subsequent Jesus film produced in South India has challenged its precedence. By looking at this brief snapshot of Chander’s history with Karunamayudu through the lenses deployed by Richard Davis in constructing his lives of Indian images, it is possible, already at the production stage, to observe a shift akin to the distinction between the context of museum and temple. From a venture initiated largely by commercial interests, it became an act of religious devotion informed by a nuanced “aesthetics of presence” that promised encounters with Jesus rather than the pantheon of gods often associated with Hindu theologies. As significantly, and in keeping with what Janet Hoskins discovered in her attempts to construct Kodi biographies, it would be almost impossible now to separate Chander’s story from that of Karunamayudu, not just because of the way that it has shaped his story and propelled his career. Rather, in much the way that a spindle and a green bottle became defining metaphors for two lives in Kodi culture, the film linked Chander to a broader discourse involving the representation, and efficacy, of encountering holy figures in South Indian cinema. As observers of Indian cinema well know, people who play gods onscreen are often esteemed as worthy of adoration (see Vaasanthi 2006). I now turn to consider the film’s reception, drawn from my interactions with a group of exhibitors that have given months and years of their lives to showing it in India. As exhibitors, they do not fit strictly into the stereotypical category of viewers; many have seen the film tens or even hundreds of times. To understand their role in the film’s history, and its role in theirs, it is critical that one have a snapshot of its exhibition history. When Karunamayudu was first released, it was a commercial venture, and a successful one at that. According to Indian film industry standards it was a blockbuster, reportedly running in one cinema for over two hundred days. Not long after its release, an American evangelical, John Gilman, repurposed it for Christian witness in India. For at least the last decade Operation Mobilization (OM), an evangelical mission, has

112

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

collaborated with John Gilman’s organization Dayspring International to show the film throughout India on a daily basis. In the course of my research I had the opportunity to travel briefly with an OM film team into the countryside of Andhra Pradesh, conduct semi-structured interviews with team members and their supervisors, and was also able to conduct a quantitative survey with 319 film team members. The questionnaire included questions about their history with the film, the number of times they have shown it, their observations about viewer responses to the film (including viewers from various religious traditions), and the film’s role in their own devotional practices. I was intrigued by the tangle of perceptions about Bible and film at work in the community of people that exhibit Karunamaydu. John Gilman, who has been the film’s champion for over thirty years, has made the following claim about the relationship between Bible and film in the context of defending the cinematic medium as a primary tool for evangelism: “I still believe that [the] visual is the most powerful tool for revelation” (quoted in Friesen 2010: 167). Furthermore, he has made the claim that viewers can “digest more gospel” from the film than could be achieved in a year of preaching (quoted in Friesen 2010: 168). Since the scriptures are often touted by evangelical organizations like OM as the “final authority for the Church,” Gilman’s claims suggest that the biblical text, despite its authority, requires visual interpretation for full effect. Informed by Hoover’s attention to disparities between practices and accounts of media, what interested me was that, despite these claims about the film’s efficacy, in practice the showing of Karunamayudu was typically accompanied by preaching or rolling commentary from film team members concerned to explain to viewers the events that were occurring. In an effort to probe this dynamic I included the following two questions on the survey (Friesen 2010: Appendix A): 6. Do you ever show the film without explaining the film or preaching? YES/NO/ OCCASIONALLY. If you answered YES or OCCASIONALLY, explain your reasons in a sentence. 7. If people saw the film without any explaining or preaching, what would they understand about Jesus? In the interest of space I shall only comment on two exhibitors’ responses. One commented that without preaching or commentary viewers would likely view Karunamayudu as a “secular” film. Another responded, “If [we] will show without explanation [t]hey think that it is a [ju]st normal movie. They will not understand that it is [a] real story” (quoted in Friesen 2010: 190). These two comments complicate Gilman’s claims about film’s efficacy as a medium of revelation. Both imply that it is perceived to suffer from a degree of inadequacy, whether it be an inability to establish its own religious or Christian pedigree, or distinguish itself from fantasy or fiction. Furthermore, approximately twothirds of the respondents suggested in one way or another that without some form of external input, viewers would not likely appreciate the significance of the movie. Jesus, they suggested, might otherwise be perceived as a guru or sadhu (holy man), a magician, or even a “film hero” (quoted in Friesen 2010: 191). Yet, despite these perceived inadequacies, several exhibitors also indicated that the movie informed their own perceptions of Jesus, and inspired their commitment to loving



Biographical Approaches to Jesus Films

113

others and practicing humility. Perhaps most significantly, one exhibitor noted that the film showed him how to both understand and share Jesus “in [the] context of our Indian way” (quoted in Friesen 2010: 193). For him it purportedly functions as an interpreter of the biblical text, but more than that, it has the ability to contextualize its interpretation in a way that shapes his identity and practice. As such, it can not only be said to have a social life and function as a defining motif for this exhibitor’s life, but his account gives us a glimpse of how one Indian evangelist has negotiated the Bible and film in daily life.

Conclusion In this chapter I have outlined in cursory fashion a case for applying biographical approaches to Jesus films by arguing that by treating them as objects of value, the social significance of which can be analyzed in relation to the practices and values with which they are associated, it may be possible to learn how people have negotiated the relationship between Bible and film in practice. Drawing briefly on my own research I have tried to demonstrate the more nuanced insights into those negotiations that can be attained by deploying a range of investigative strategies to the study of Jesus films as they move through different communities of response or are put to different uses. Perhaps the next time a companion of this sort is produced it will include a section concerned with the relationship between Bible and film in daily life.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

See also Chapter 14 in said volume. Davis’s biographies address primarily three-dimensional images or sites. But see Seesengood herein. Its main proponent, Campus Crusade for Christ International, claims that the film has been seen over six billion times but to the best of my knowledge that number has never been independently corroborated. See “Jesus Film Project” (n.d.). By drawing attention to the LotR project I do not mean to ignore other foundational work in film reception studies, like Staiger (1992). For detailed methodology, see Chapter 14 in the volume. Unless otherwise noted, the observations in the paragraphs below regarding ­Karunamayudu summarize findings from my unpublished doctoral dissertation (2010: 168–94, 212–22). For my detailed analyses of the film’s history and content, see Friesen (2007: 125–41 and 2008: 165–88).

Works cited Appadurai, Arjun, ed. (1986), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barker, Martin, and Ernest Mathjis, eds. (2008), Watching the Lord of the Rings: Tolkien’s World Audiences, New York: Peter Lang.

114

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Child, Ben (2011), “Jim Caviezel Claims ‘The Passion of the Christ’ Made Him a Hollywood Outcast,” The Guardian, 3 May. Available online: https://www.theguardian. com/film/2011/may/03/jim-caviezel-passion-of-the-christ (accessed October 15, 2016). Couldry, Nick (2000), Inside Culture: Re-imagining the Method of Cultural Studies, London: SAGE. Davis, Richard H. (1997), Lives of Indian Images, Princeton and Chichester: Princeton University Press. Friesen, Dwight (2007), “Showing Compassion and Suggesting Peace in Karunamayudu an Indian Jesus Film,” Studies in World Christianity, 14 (2): 125–41. Friesen, Dwight H. (2008), “Karunamayudu: Seeing Christ Anew in Indian Cinema,” in David Shepherd (ed.), Images of the Word: Hollywood’s Bible and Beyond, 165–88, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Friesen, Dwight H. (2010), “An Analysis of the Production, Content, Distribution and Reception of Karunamayudu (1978), An Indian Jesus Film,” PhD diss., University of Edinburgh. Harbord, Janet (2002), Film Cultures, London: SAGE. Hoover, Stewart (2003), “Religion, Media and Identity: Theory and Method in Audience Research on Religion and Media,” in Jolyon Mitchell (ed.), Mediating Religion, 9–20, London: T&T Clark. Hoskins, Janet (1998), Biographical Objects, New York: Routledge. “Jesus Film Project” (n.d.). Available online: https://www.jesusfilm.org (accessed December 16, 2016). Kopytoff, Igor (1986), “The Cultural Biography of Things,” in Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things, 64–91, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Riley, Thomas Robin (2003), Film, Faith and Cultural Conflict, Westport: Praeger. Staiger, Janet (1992), Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema, Princeton and Chichester: Princeton University Press. Vaasanthi (2006), Cut-Outs, Caste and Cine Stars, New Delhi: Penguin.

9

Frames and Borders in Deuteronomy and Films on the Palestinian–Israeli Conflict1 Brian Britt

This chapter connects the problem of political borders to the formal category of frames in biblical texts and film. Two films—Five Broken Cameras, a Palestinian’s account of protests against the Israeli separation wall, and The Law in These Parts, a series of interviews with Israeli judges who established and administered law in the West Bank (both 2011)—present contested political borders by breaking the conventional frames of the documentary form. Comparable frame-breaks appear in passages of Deuteronomy and Joshua that describe political borders. The Law in These Parts and Five Broken Cameras are not explicitly biblical films, but on a formal level, their play with conventional frames can be compared to Robert Polzin’s studies of the Deuteronomistic history (1980). Both Bible and the films deploy frames and “frame-breaks” to address territorial claims, narrate human migration, and deploy political ideology. As examples of what Judith Butler calls the “frames of war” that govern how life is perceived, these frames and frame-breaks characterize disputes over borders and suggest ways to transcend frames and borders alike (Butler 2009: 23–27). While the biblical texts acknowledge the variability of territorial borders, the films challenge efforts to define and naturalize political borders in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. My comparative analysis includes key passages of Deuteronomy and Joshua, along with key moments in the two films, that align formal frames and frame-breaks with the thematic issues of borders and the migration of communities.

Frame-brakes and framing reality Narrative frames and frame-breaks structure Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic history. Framed entirely as the “farewell speech of Moses,” Deuteronomy begins and ends with the story of Moses preparing to die after instructing the people of Israel through divine commandments, retelling their history, leading a covenant ceremony, and designating Joshua as a successor. Written in stages long after the time of its setting, Deuteronomy suggests an analogy between the past of Moses, who recounts Israel’s history in Egypt and the wilderness, and the past of the narrator, who looks

116

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

back on the time of Moses from a standpoint centuries later (Britt 2016: 159). The narrative frame of Moses’s farewell speech thus overlaps the narrative frame of the book itself. Robert Polzin identifies frame-breaks in the deuteronomistic narrative as devices that connect the past to the narrator’s present. Citing Erving Goffman’s influential discussion of the frame as a source of social meaning (1974), Polzin sees the framebreak as a way for the narrator to assert authority and engage the text’s contemporary audience, for example with the phrase “to this day” (Polzin 1980: 30–33, citing, e.g., Deut. 2:22; 3:14; 10:8). By the end of Deuteronomy, the narrator’s voice has mingled with that of Moses and elevated the narrator to the position of summing up Moses’s life (Deut. 34:10). Similar cases linking the past of Joshua to the present of the narrator appear in Josh. 4:9, 9:27, and 16:10. Polzin’s methods are literary, but his argument is that the frames and frame-breaks of deuteronomistic narrative have ideological (theological) ramifications, linking the text’s audience and narrator to the past of Moses and the ancient Israelites (Polzin 1980: 72). In Frames of War, theorist Judith Butler conceptualizes frames as mechanisms that shape reality: The frame does not simply exhibit reality, but actively participates in a strategy of containment, selectively producing and enforcing what will count as reality. It tries to do this, and its efforts are a powerful wager. Although framing cannot always contain what it seeks to make visible or readable, it remains structured by the aim of instrumentalizing certain versions of reality. This means that the frame is always throwing something away, always keeping something out, always de-realizing and de-legitimating alternative versions of reality, discarded negatives of the official version. (Butler 2009: xiii)

Yet the frame never manages to contain reality completely; Butler argues that conditions of time and reproducibility change the frame’s context and thus break the frame. “What happens when a frame breaks with itself is that a taken-for-granted reality is called into question, exposing the orchestrating designs of the authority who sought to control the frame” (Butler 2009: 12). Frame-breaks become an opportunity to see reality differently and potentially to change it. Polzin’s frame-break describes interruptions of narrative flow and convention, while Butler’s refers more broadly to shifts in conventional images of reality. Both, though, consider frames in semiotic terms, as linguistic, visual, and cultural vehicles of meaning, and both consider the frame-break to be an opportunity to see beyond a single, conventional view of reality into another. In Frame Analysis (1974), Goffman shows that frame-breaks can dramatically change one’s perspective and experience: “If the whole frame can be shaken, rendered problematic, then this, too, can ensure that prior involvements—and prior distances—can be broken up and that, whatever else happens, a dramatic change can occur in what it is that is being experienced” (Goffman 1974: 382). Likewise for Polzin and Butler, frame-breaks enable new perspectives on reality, broadening the temporal and ideological scope of perception and possibility.



Frames and Borders in Deuteronomy and Film

117

Frames and borders My aim in connecting this concept of frames and frame-breaks to a discussion of geographical and political borders is not simply to draw an analogy between frames and borders, which would be easy enough, but rather to propose a deeper conceptual and genealogical connection between frames and borders by way of a link between text and territory. Texts may demarcate territory, but the reading of these texts may open, rather than close, territorial borders. It is certainly clear that parts of Deuteronomy and much of Joshua focus on naming and establishing territorial borders. The Hebrew term ‫גבול‬, which is translated as “border” and “boundary,” appears six times in Deuteronomy and over forty-five times in Joshua. One of these cases, Deut. 3:13-14, belongs to Polzin’s list of frame-breaking texts: And I gave to the half-tribe of Manasseh the rest of Gilead and all of Bashan, Og’s kingdom. (The whole region of Argob: all that portion of Bashan used to be called a land of Rephaim; Jair the Manassite acquired the whole region of Argob as far as the border (‫)גבול‬, of the Geshurites and the Maacathites, and he named them— that is, Bashan—after himself, Havvoth-jair, as it is to this day.)

This text, like others in Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Numbers (especially Num. 32–34), notes the division of territory for the impending Israelite conquest. Moshe Weinfeld describes this case, along with Deut. 2:11-12 and 2:20, as “intercalated notes” that specify the history of territorial names and conquests (Weinfeld 1991: 161nn10-12). By listing past and present place names for territories in the north, the framebreak in Deut. 3:13-14 attempts to fix boundaries while admitting their variability and openness. The territories named there extend far beyond previous boundaries yet include groups that will survive the conquest predicted here: “The Deuteronomic tradition assigns to Manasseh a much larger area than the previous sources [e.g., Numbers]” (Weinfeld 1991: 185n14). Yet this expansive version of the territory of Manasseh will be undercut by an incomplete conquest: “The Geshur and the Maacah, two ethnic groups to the west of the Bashan between the Hermon and Gilead in the north . . . were not subjugated by the Israelites during the conquest (see Josh. 13:13 and compare 12:5)” (Weinfeld 1991: 185n14). The claim to territory has expanded from Numbers to Deuteronomy, but in Joshua that expansion will be tempered by the survival of others living there. What makes this passage distinctive is the narrator’s explanation of the territory’s name and history, which provides continuity between the time of Moses and the present. For modern readers used to the replacement of old place names with new ones, three different names for the same place (Rephaim, Bashan, and Jair) may not seem surprising. But when the text breaks frame with Moses’s “farewell speech” to clarify territorial borders and names, it alerts the audience to the contingencies of boundaries and territorial names. This uncharacteristic concern with northern place names may indicate an affiliation between the deuteronomistic source with the Gershonites of the region, but its effect is a concern for detail that stands out even in Deuteronomy (Geoghegan 2003: 219).

118

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

The passage also illustrates the general tension within the Deuteronomistic history between divine control and historical contingency, for just as place names have changed in the past, they will also change in the future, as the frame-breaks indicate. The tension leads to contradiction in Joshua, which openly affirms the incompleteness of the conquest (13:1) and later affirms the opposite, that all of the land and its inhabitants had been completely conquered (21:43-45; Polzin regards this latter passage as ironic [1980: 127–28]). Equivocal if not self-contradictory on the contours and fixity of territorial boundaries, these texts contribute to a major transition in Deuteronomy and Joshua from promise to fulfillment, marked by the farewell and death of Moses and his succession by Joshua and, more significantly, the preservation of his words. It is not a smooth transition: just after our passage in Deuteronomy 3 about the territory of Bashan, the God of Israel denies Moses’s request to cross the Jordan—“Enough from you! Never speak to me of this matter again!” (v. 26)—allowing him only to see the land and to give Joshua command of the conquest. The completeness of borders in Deuteronomy and Joshua parallels the completeness of divine commandments, as the repeated phrase “all the words,” which appears nine times in Deuteronomy (9:10; 17:19; 27:3, 8; 28:58; 29:29; 31:12; 32:44, 46) and twice in Joshua (8:34; 24:27), indicates. This insistence that borders and language are complete suggests a struggle against fragmentation and an awareness, often explicit in the texts, of their incompleteness. At a more abstract level, the focus on completeness stands against the contingencies and flux of Israelite history, in which divine control and territorial integrity were typically elusive. The text’s emphasis on completeness, along with an interest in temporal continuity, involves the broader concern with theodicy—how divine order relates to human history. The recurring phrase “until this day,” which appears four times in Deuteronomy and thirteen times in Joshua, reflects a pre-exilic attempt to establish temporal continuity (Geoghegan 2003: 205, 213). Yet many of these texts, like Deut. 3:13-14, also reflect flux or the incompleteness of conquest, as in the case of Joshua 9 (Gibeonites), 13 (Geshurites and Maacathites), 15 (Jebusites), and 16 (Canaanites). The narrative strives to present history as divinely ordered, but history resists. Tensions between past and present, completeness and fragmentation, disclose the problem of theodicy in narrative form. This theodicy, which pits completeness and fulfillment against historical change, finds form for the attentive reader in the frames and frame-breaks of Deuteronomy and Joshua. Polzin’s frame-breaks thus connect literary form to political concerns. Discontinuity in the text is usually explained by different authorial and editorial layers, but it may be the narrator’s efforts to link past to present, ideal to reality—by explaining the changing names of Bashan in Deuteronomy 3 or the survival of the Gibeonites in contemporary Israel “to this day” (9:27)—that provides the best explanation for dissonances within the narrative. Central to the literary design of Deuteronomy and Joshua, frame-breaks interrupt the narrative to show that frames and borders are provisional and contingent, in spite of theological aspirations (ancient and modern) to the contrary. Polzin’s frame-breaks thus extend from literary form to the ideological and political concerns of Butler. The promise of order through territory, political order, and values in the Deuteronomic covenant never reaches complete fulfillment, despite occasional assertions to that effect.



Frames and Borders in Deuteronomy and Film

119

In order to pursue this line of thinking into the present, I turn to two documentary films about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which frame-breaks draw attention to the contestation of borders. My aim here is not simply the comparison of Bible to film, ancient to contemporary Israel, or frames to borders. Rather, my interest is to juxtapose these cinematic examples with biblical texts in order to reflect further on frames and borders. My point is that frames and borders are constructs subject to changes that are as political as they are semiotic. I am also suggesting that the fluidity of frames and borders is not just a modern discovery but that it appears also in Deuteronomy and Joshua and thus belongs to centuries of tradition. Like biblical frame-breaks, the films’ frame-breaks interrupt conventions of genre in ways that bring attention to the activity of filmmaking and the perspective of the filmmaker. The Law in These Parts (2011), a documentary consisting of interviews with retired judges who ruled in cases involving the Israeli occupation, opens with a scene depicting the assembly of a desk and arrangement of equipment on the set of the film (see Figure 9.1). The director’s monologue in that scene describes the inherently constructed and selective nature of the film and the documentary genre in general. At another reflexive moment in the film, the filmmaker’s voiceover compares his editorial control of whether  to include or leave out a particular interview (with a Palestinian) and the control exercised by the Israeli government in establishing and enforcing laws in the  territories. The present-day interviews with retired judges and administrators trace the history of the occupation from its beginnings in 1967, when a large territory suddenly came under Israeli jurisdiction, through several decades of policies that shifted from shorter to longer time frames as the conflict continued. Taken together, the interviews raise questions of how law legitimates the use of force and the competing demands of order and justice. Never naive and often quite lucid about the conflicting duties to rule of law and political pressures, the judges reflect on the implications of

Figure 9.1  Assembling the set in The Law in These Parts (2011).

120

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

their work, noting for example that a decision that improves conditions under the occupation may also serve to extend and strengthen it. In this way, the film can be compared to another documentary, The Gatekeepers (2012), which presents interviews with former leaders of Israeli security forces. Frame-breaks in The Law in These Parts disavow claims to comprehensive or universal knowledge. They bring attention to the act of documentary making and the filmmaker’s power over what to show and what to leave out. In Deuteronomy and Joshua, by contrast, frame-breaks elevate the narrator’s position as a source of authoritative knowledge. Yet in both cases, frame-breaks serve to separate the act of storytelling from the subject of storytelling, both in terms of time and space. Framebreaks remind the audience that the storyteller is here and now, narrating something from there and then. This temporal and spatial distance by itself affirms the necessity of change. Some narratives struggle not to overcome distance (as in Deuteronomy) but to create it. Five Broken Cameras (2011) documents two parallel stories in the life of filmmaker Emad Burnad: the birth and development of his fourth son, and the political protest in his village against the Israeli separation wall and occupation. The cameras of the film’s title document a series of clashes between Israeli forces and demonstrators filmed by Burnad. Each time a camera is destroyed, he repairs or replaces it and continues recording scenes of demonstrations and life in his community (see Figure 9.2). Burnad’s film captures events as they unfold, including shootings that injure and kill, along with scenes of ordinary life among the Palestinian activists, from the attempt to build a shelter that withstands the physical and legal barriers of Israeli control. The danger to the lives of Burnad and his community is thus coextensive with and symbolized by the danger to his cameras. In this situation, filmmaking magnifies the here and now rather than breaking frame and creating distance. Yet in the editing and voiceover, Burnad creates distance between his film and the immediacy of his situation. In a scene showing the screening of early footage of his film in the village, Burnad says, “Screening my footage allows the villagers to get some distance from these events.” Near the end of Five Broken Cameras, in a scene where a hospital visit to Tel Aviv allows Burnad to take his children to the beach, the filmmaker claims that his work attempts to help him heal the physical (and psychological) wounds he has experienced. Healing, he says, is the victim’s only obligation, and, he continues, “I film to heal.” Five Broken Cameras and The Law in These Parts share an interest in details of how land is lost, acquired, and held under the occupation. A scene in The Law in These Parts retells how the Ottoman law of “mawat [dead] land” represented a turningpoint in the Israeli occupation. One of the retired jurists recounts how he mentioned this little-known law, which allowed the seizure of land for reasons other than security, in a meeting with Ariel Sharon, and how Sharon immediately asked him to explain it further. Five Broken Cameras documents how the Palestinian protesters take advantage of an Israeli law banning the automatic destruction of a concrete structure to establish a “settlement” of their own on land that had been seized by the government.



Frames and Borders in Deuteronomy and Film

121

Figure 9.2  Burnad repairs cameras in Five Broken Cameras (2011).

By drawing attention to the process of making a documentary film, The Law in These Parts and Five Broken Cameras raise questions about how life relates to film, how filmmakers make choices, and whether film can make an impact on the conflict. Both films incorporate frames and frame-breaks in ways that can be compared to those in Deuteronomy and Joshua. In Theory of Film, for example, Siegfried Kracauer compares some films to novels and identifies framing as a structural device used to set the scene in narrative films (Kracauer 1960: 260–61). In these films, frames and frame-breaks provide that function and alert viewers to the subjectivity and incompleteness of documentaries by pointing out and subverting the framing conventions of the genre.

Conclusion: Territory and tradition I have argued that frame-breaks in the Deuteronomistic history, even as they aim to resolve tensions between ideology and history, alert the audience to the contingency of ancient borders. Modern political borders, even when they are openly contested, can become so naturalized and taken for granted that it takes a disruption of perception, like the frame-breaks in the two films I cited, to question them. Biblical frame-breaks attempt to harmonize differences, while the two films I discussed point them out. In any case, the contingency of political borders may be more apparent in the biblical narrative than in some contemporary claims made in the name of biblical tradition. Borders in the Bible and today’s world play a major role in marking human identity; then and now, place names such as biblical Havvoth-jair or modern Syria often correspond to particular groups. In a remarkable 2016 essay on the current plight of

122

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

global refugees, Frances Stonor Saunders elaborates the connection between borders and identity: All borders—the lines and symbols on a map, the fretwork of walls and fences on the ground, and the often complex enmeshments by which we organise our lives—are explanations of identity. We construct borders, literally and figuratively, to fortify our sense of who we are; and we cross them in search of who we might become. They are philosophies of space, credibility contests, latitudes of neurosis, signatures to the social contract, soothing containments, scars.

Together with the documentation one needs to cross them, borders shape human identity by structuring location, mobility, and possibility. But borders are constructs built as much from language as topography, and the order they create can disappear in a day. My argument that narrative frames and frame-breaks in the Bible indicate the contingency of political borders rests on a broader claim that debate and difference characterize biblical texts. Frame-breaks have a contemporary ring about them, but as Polzin shows, they are common in biblical narrative and belong to a large set of complexities and differences within biblical texts. The history of writing and editing texts like Deuteronomy may never come fully to light, but the visibility of historical and editorial layers in the text displays a model of tradition as a dynamic process as much as a canonical product. The analogy of frame to border intersects with broader biblical associations of text and territory. By its history and continued influence, the Hebrew Bible represents and narrates a shift from territory to text and leaves a legacy that binds text to territory conceptually and ideologically (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 122–23; 1983: 206–07). But a tradition composed of texts rather than territory can threaten political power. In Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Wall and the Books,” the fictionalized Chinese emperor who builds the Great Wall also orders the burning of all books. The emperor is afraid of those who dwell on the past, who revere the tradition that precedes him: Perhaps Shih Huang Ti walled in the empire because he knew it to be perishable and destroyed the books because they were sacred books, books that teach what the entire universe or the conscience of each man teaches. Perhaps the burning of the libraries and the construction of the wall are undertakings that secretly cancel themselves. (1967: 91)

By itself, a text can neither endow nor destroy political power, but it can confirm or deny political legitimacy. The frames and frame-breaks of biblical texts reveal not just processes of writing and editing but a tradition that recognizes the impermanence of borders. For texts and films alike, understanding frames and frame-breaks depends on training the audience in reading and reception. Recognizing the massive appeal and political influence of film as compared to other forms of art, Walter Benjamin identified the need to theorize and cultivate the aesthetic and political sensibilities of mass audiences (Benjamin 2008: 40–42). Such training in reading and reception becomes increasingly necessary to discern how reality is framed.



Frames and Borders in Deuteronomy and Film

123

Note 1 I wish to thank Lucy Britt and Aaron Ansell for helping me refine the argument of this piece.

Works cited Benjamin, Walter (2008), “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,” in Walter Benjamin (ed.), The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, 19–55, Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin (eds.), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Borges, Jorge Luis (1967), “The Wall and the Books,” in Jorge Luis Borges (ed.), A Personal Anthology, 89–93, New York: Grove. Britt, Brian (2016), “Remembering Narrative in Deuteronomy,” in Danna Nolan Fewell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Narrative, 157–67, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Butler, Judith (2009), Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? London: Verso. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari (1983), Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari (1987), A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Geoghegan, Jeffrey (2003), “‘Until this Day’ and the Preexilic Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 122 (2): 201–27. Goffman, Erving (1974), Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kracauer, Siegfried (1960), Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Polzin, Robert (1980), Moses and the Deuteronomist: A Literary Study of the Deuteronomic History: Part 1: Deuteronomy/Joshua/Judges, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Saunders, Frances Stonor (2016), “Where on Earth are You?” London Review of Books, 38, 3 March, 7–12. Available online: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n05/francesstonorsaunders/where-on-earth-are-you (accessed January 9, 2017). Weinfeld, Moshe (1991), Deuteronomy 1-11: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, New York: Doubleday.

10

“Blessed Are the Peacemakers”: The Deployment of Jesus in American and German Cinema During and After the First World War David J. Shepherd

America 1916: Blessed are the peacemakers Following his earlier Judith of Bethulia (1913) and spurred on to surpass the scale and spectacle of Giovanni Pastrone’s extraordinary Cabiria (1914), America’s leading director, D. W. Griffith, embarked on a massive production which eventually reached screens as Intolerance (1916).1 In doing so, Griffith spent much of the money generated by his Birth of a Nation (1915)—a box-office success set in the Civil War and roundly accused of racism. Griffith’s Intolerance was not so much an apology for his earlier film as an apologia for it and a denunciation of its critics’ intolerance (see Drew 1986: 9–11). While far less successful at the box office than Birth of a Nation, Griffith’s Intolerance is no less remarkable, in part because of the film’s scale, scope, and spectacle and in part because Intolerance intercuts four discrete stories of intolerance from four different historical periods: a story of medieval persecution of the Huguenots, a modern parable about the evils of so-called meddling reformers in contemporary America, and then two biblical narratives: the fall of Babylon and Christ’s life and passion. Jewish protests at Griffith’s portrayal of Jewish involvement in Jesus’s death meant that the Judaean story was cut to no more than a dozen minutes of Intolerance’s three and a half hours.2 Jesus is initially contrasted with hypocritical and proud Pharisees, who then look askance at Jesus’s turning of the water into wine and view the festivities at the wedding of Cana as indulgent and frivolous. Jesus’s intervention in favor of the woman caught in adultery is portrayed as yet another example of Jesus’s stand against hypocritical intolerance. Jesus also welcomes the little children to him in a separate scene before Griffith depicts much later in the film the Jewish mob’s persecution of Jesus on the way to the cross.3 Griffith begins to associate intolerance with war in the medieval story—in an intertitle that contrasts “peace” with “intolerance.”4 However, the Babylonian sequence especially advances Griffith’s critique of armed intolerance, as an intertitle introducing the fall of Babylon indicates: “Cyrus moves upon Babylon; in his hand the sword of war, most potent weapon forged in the flames of intolerance.” Spurred on by the scale of Cabiria’s



“Blessed Are the Peacemakers”

125

own scenes of a city under attack, Griffith’s siege of Babylon reflects and eclipses his earlier depiction of the siege of Bethulia, not only in terms of the sets’ scale but also the cast’s size, scenes’ length, the combat’s complexity, the lighting’s ambition (in the night scenes), and the sheer volume of cinematic spectacle (see Shepherd 2013: 157–96). Unexpectedly, Griffith’s Cyrus is an altogether vicious character: as his Persian forces assault the walls of Babylon, a narratorial intertitle articulates Cyrus’s appetite for destruction: “Cyrus repeats the world old prayer to kill, kill, kill—and to God be the glory, world without end, Amen.” In the Hebrew Bible, the God of the Jews inspires Cyrus to repatriate them and restore their temple, but, according to Griffith, this Jewish God also—and evidently more importantly—authorizes Cyrus’s destructive military rampage and is given the glory for the death of Belshazzar and his innocent Babylonians. Indeed, Griffith’s remaking of Belshazzar—whom the Hebrew Bible (Daniel) parodies for his pride—into an innocent prophet of tolerance, who is betrayed by those nearest to him and dies an innocent death at the hands of the militarist Cyrus, seems to have been prompted by the same anti-Jewish impulse that persuades him to portray Jesus as the victim of violent Jewish intolerance (Shepherd 2013: 180–90). Yet, as William Drew points out, Griffith’s unflinching and critical portrayal of war’s horrors represents the resumption of a theme found already in Birth of a Nation’s portrayal of the Civil War (Drew 1986: 123). While Drew sees the resumption of this theme in Intolerance primarily in the Babylonian sequence, Griffith’s painting of Jesus in some part and Belshazzar in large part, as victims of armed intolerance, also reflects the pacifism pervading Griffith’s biblical appropriations. Thus, at the film’s end, following a long shot of the crucifixion in the distance (see Figure 10.1), Griffith also makes it clear that Jesus is not merely a victim of intolerance but ultimately a victor over it.

Figure 10.1  Crucifixion in the distance in Intolerance (1916).

126

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

He does so by moving from the Boy’s deliverance from the gallows in the Modern story to the film’s “coda,” a montage introduced with the intertitle: “when cannon and prison bars wrought in the fires of intolerance—.” Scenes of modern prisoners clamoring for release follow, intercut with long shots of a contemporary European battlefield, complete with a cannon blast, charging infantry, and hand-to-hand combat. As the battle continues, a heavenly theophany begins; then as various soldiers raise their rifles to plunge their bayonets into their enemies in a vignette, the action pauses and Griffith cuts to a vision of the heavenly hosts, before completing the coda’s opening sentiment with another intertitle: “And perfect love shall bring peace evermore.” That Christ—and him crucified—is the bringer of this eternal peace and that this peace is freedom from war’s horrors is reinforced by Griffith’s cut back to the soldiers who raise their eyes to the heavenly light and drop their rifles to the ground, before Griffith finally cuts to a vision of the glorified Christ who is represented and indeed replaced by a heavenly cross of white light (see Figure 10.2)—a shot which implies Griffith’s use of Jesus as talisman, both here and in a different fashion in Birth of a Nation (Walsh 2016a: 192–95). The absence of spectacle up to this point in Jesus’s story (see Walsh 2016a: 193) serves only to make more visible, spectacle’s centrality here—of the masses seeing and of Christ being seen—as the catalyst for peace in the end. It is small wonder that Griffith expresses the conviction that “the motion picture is war’s greatest antidote” in his 1916 pamphlet The Rise and Fall of Free Speech in America (compare Drew 1986: 125). That a film depicting violence so vividly might be pacifist in purpose has puzzled some. But Paul O’Dell’s insistence that Griffith’s

Figure 10.2  The spectacle of the cross in Intolerance’s coda (1916).



“Blessed Are the Peacemakers”

127

depiction of war’s horrors in Intolerance must be pacifist rather than sensationalist (1970: 60) suggests a failure to recognize the frequent coexistence of moral polarities and sensationalist violence in early film melodrama (Singer 2001). Rather than implying its ultimate glorification, I suggest that violence’s sensationalizing is essential to bring home pacifism’s urgency.5 Griffith’s Intolerance was of course not the only film released during the Great War expressing pacifist sentiment. Shot in 1915, Thomas Ince’s Civilization was not released until the following year—a few short months before Intolerance.6 Lacking both Intolerance’s multiple discrete narratives and Cabiria-esque spectacle, Civilization was more modest and conventional, yet it too employed the Jesus tradition in preaching peace, even as Europe was being torn apart by what was soon to become the most destructive war in history.7 While viewers of Intolerance wait until the final coda for Griffith’s explicit deployment of the crucified and then conquering Christ against the intolerance of Europe’s Great War, Ince’s initial intertitles make his film’s intentions clear: Can we still call ourselves civilized when we shut our eyes against the command of the Prince of Peace? “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Picture his agonized soul as he views the mangled bodies of thousands that strew the battlefields,—of desolate homes and ruined lives.

Ince presents a peaceful kingdom—fictional but clearly contemporary and European— “forced into War by a monarch, ill-advised by the Military powers.” Introduced with a vignette, Ince’s modern battlefield scenes are vivid and violent and displayed at far greater length than in Griffith’s coda. Large-scale casualties lead to the king’s conscription of men and their mothers’ protests—rearticulating the maternal anxieties so thoroughly mined in early cinematic melodrama.8 Having been persuaded by the king to build a submarine, Count Ferdinand is ordered to torpedo a passenger ship purported to be carrying ordinance (like the Lusitania, which was sunk in 1915). Imagining the resulting loss of life, the conscience-stricken count instead scuttles the sub and is the sole survivor rescued by the ship he was meant to sink. Mortally wounded, the count apparently dies, descending to a purgatory where he encounters warmongers paying for their crimes but also a white-robed Christ, who by means of a truc—a cinematic double exposure—enters the count’s body to “return [to the land of the living] and plead for peace” (see Figure 10.3). Following an extended spectacle of battleships at war, the incarnated count appears first among children and—much as in Griffith’s Intolerance—“suffers the little children to come unto him.” In both films, the children’s attraction to Jesus contrasts with the intolerant, warring adult world the Christ (figure) will soon encounter. In the ensuing passion, the count’s preaching of “blessed are the peacemakers” incurs the wrath, false accusations, and blows of his enemies, who persuade the king to summon the count. The count’s own Via Dolorosa is underlined when he stumbles and the audience shares an attending officer’s vision of Jesus stumbling under the cross’s weight—the film’s only explicit depiction of Jesus’s passion (Walsh 2016a: 190). An intertitle, “Before a Modern Pilate,” introducing the count’s trial, furthers the analogy.

128

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Figure 10.3  Ferdinand encounters the Christ in Civilization (1916). Sentenced to death for treason, the incarcerated count is bathed in a heavenly light summoning the “mothers of men” to enter the capital to press the king for peace. Informed that the prisoner has died, the king goes to the cell, where he beholds (“as in a trance”) Jesus abandon his incarnation of the count’s corpse (see Figure 10.4), seen slumped against the wall—to show the king the horrors of the war he has inflicted upon his people. Returning to himself, the king promptly signs an accord signaling the return of civilization to his now “peaceable” kingdom. If one’s focus is limited to Intolerance’s Judean story, Richard Walsh’s suggestion that Civilization offers a “far clearer pacifist message” (Walsh 2016a: 191) than Intolerance is certainly tenable. When, however, one considers that the bulk of Intolerance’s sizeable Babylonian story revolves around and illustrates in graphic detail the tragedy of armed intolerance’s triumph over the peace-loving Belshazzar and when one considers the armed intervention in the Huguenot sequence as well, the case becomes less clear-cut. In fact, even if Griffith’s film speaks against forms of intolerance other than war, it offers no less a pacifist message than Civilization does. Further, despite Walsh’s claim that Griffith’s film does not call for the ethical imitation of Jesus as clearly as Ince’s film does (Walsh 2016a: 191), Griffith’s Jesus does consistently exemplify opposition to “intolerance,” in both words and actions: in opposing Pharisaic intolerance at the wedding in Cana, in suffering the children to come to him, and in defending the woman taken in adultery, the latter two of which are often used in the cinema to illustrate Jesus’s pedagogical character. The ultimacy of Griffith’s depiction of Jesus as the symbol of the innocent victim on the cross on Golgotha (Walsh 2016a: 191), and effective replacement of Jesus with a cross of white light in the end, is relevant here because it is only in the film’s heavenly



“Blessed Are the Peacemakers”

129

Figure 10.4  Jesus abandons his incarnation of the count in Civilization (1916). coda that Griffith offers a visual depiction of the war raging in Europe when the film was released. This heavenly cross symbolizing the crucified and glorified Christ is what Intolerance offers as the “ultimate” antidote to the armed intolerance (war) ravaging its world. Indeed, focusing on the end of Ince’s Civilization illustrates that the key difference between Griffith’s Jesus and Ince’s is not merely that Ince’s Jesus preaches peace more explicitly, but that he does so to the end. Despite the count’s Christ-like passion, the first clue that the count’s death is quite unlike Jesus’s death is offered, ironically, when a priest delivers the news of his death to the king with the help of an intertitle: “Your Majesty—the Count Ferdinand has escaped the death sentence—.” Perhaps because the Christ who possesses the count is the risen Christ and cannot be crucified again or perhaps because the count’s death cannot atone as Christ’s does, Ferdinand escapes what Jesus does not—his execution. Indeed, the count’s death is in many respects the antithesis of the cross—private rather than public, peaceful rather than violent, and unobserved by foe or friend (except perhaps by the priest), rather than a spectacle for Mary and the Jewish masses. Quite unlike Griffith’s Intolerance—in which peace comes only when those who make war see Christ crucified and the spectacle of the cross glorified—in Ince’s Civilization, once freed from the count’s corpse, Ince’s Jesus does not make a spectacle of his own death, but instead makes the king see and respond to the death of those being killed by the king’s own warmongering. Unlike Griffith’s Jesus then, Ince’s Jesus remains a teacher and preacher of peace to the end, as befits a film whose prologue asks viewers whether we can call ourselves civilized when we shut our eyes, not to the cross, but rather to the “command of the Prince of Peace. . . . Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

130

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

The son of Protestant English immigrants, Thomas Ince’s interest in Christian religion must be divined from the films he directed and produced. While Civilization explores Christianity’s false association with militarism and its disastrous consequences at a societal level, films, like The Quakeress (1913), present misunderstandings of Christianity in a more intimate fashion, as corrosive to the nuclear family’s fabric. So too, a number of films which feature Christian ministers reflect Ince’s interest in exploring the experience and impact of characters with a religious vocation—these films include A Gamble in Souls (1916), The Market of Vain Desire (1916), and Hell’s Hinges (shot in 1915) (Taves 2012: 93–95). That a film like Civilization might both reflect and project a Christianity that looks more to Jesus’s teaching than to his death to buttress its pacifist message is hardly surprising given that the years between 1910 and America’s entry into the war marked the high-water mark of Protestant influence on the Progressive Era (see Zahniser 2005; Gorrell 1988). Woodrow Wilson himself, while at Johns Hopkins in the 1880s, was influenced by his studies under the economist Richard T. Ely (Burnidge 2016), one of the leading lights of a Social Gospel movement whose theological underpinnings were in the liberal theology of Ritschl and Harnack (see Dorrien 2003). For Harnack, the essence of Jesus’s Gospel and therefore of Christianity resides in “God the Father, Providence, the position of Men as God’s children, [and] the infinite value of the Human Soul” (1901: 54; expounded, 54–85). Conspicuously absent here is an orthodox appreciation of Jesus’s crucifixion—an omission that did not pass unnoticed by contemporary critics of Harnack (so Cremer 1903: 246–68) or those in his wake deemed guilty of a similar neglect (see, e.g., the typically robust exchange between Macintosh 1914 and Warfield 1914). Indeed, despite his early admiration for Macintosh (Diefenthaler 1986: 38), this omission prompted Richard Niebuhr, in his much later The Kingdom of God in America, to dismiss liberal theology as preaching a gospel in which a “God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross” ([1937] 1988: 193). When Woodrow Wilson took office, however, the cross’s absence from Ince’s film will have barely registered with liberal Christians and indeed perhaps not with President Wilson himself, who not only received a prerelease, private screening of Ince’s film, but also consented to being photographed for a prologue of the film and discussed aspects of the film with Ince and his codirector, J. Parker Read (Taves 2012: 96). It is important to recall however that the Social Gospel movement, which came to be aligned in some ways in the prewar years with the Progressive Era, was itself by no means theologically monolithic. Thus, while the interpretation of the kingdom of God in profoundly social terms by Walter Rauschenbusch (1916)—perhaps the most famous father of the Social Gospel movement—is clearly indebted to Harnack’s What Is Christianity? (see Smucker 1994: 100–01), Rauschenbusch’s own theological vision made considerably more room for the cross’s significance, a point made clear in his Theology for a Social Gospel (1917). Understanding humanity as inextricably entangled in a sin profoundly social and societal, Rauschenbusch had long since abandoned his evangelical understanding of atonement in favor of the belief that the sins, which Jesus bore, were “the public sins of organized society” (Rauschenbusch 1917: 247). While



“Blessed Are the Peacemakers”

131

this deprived the crucifixion of any traditional atoning function, it left more of a place than some other “gospels” of the early twentieth century for the cross as a symbol of Jesus’s ultimate act of “opposition to sin.” Such a description resonates well with how the crucifixion and the cross function in Griffith’s own social gospel—where the glorification of the crucifixion and the cross, Jesus’s act of opposition to the sin of intolerance—takes the ultimate place in his vision of Christian peacemaking. Thus while Griffith and Ince’s peaceful deployment of Jesus reflects their shared embrace of the Social Gospel’s Jesus, Griffith’s preference for Christ as cruciform talisman and Ince’s preference for Jesus as Christian teacher may also reflect the differing emphases within this Social Gospel in the early years of the Great War.

Intermission: America 1918: Love your enemies (but not too much) After America entered the Great War on the side of Britain, France, and Russia in the spring of 1917, Thomas Ince recut Civilization to reflect the sea-change in public attitude toward the conflict in Europe (see Taves 2012: 97).9 In the following spring, Griffith—not to be outdone—released the era’s largest, most spectacular war-related film, Hearts of the World (April 1918), in which Griffith simply exploited the war as the setting for a conventional melodrama, supplying a happy ending for both. But in the early months of 1918, Hollywood’s contribution to the war effort also took the form of films like The Unbeliever, released by the Edison company in cooperation with the United States Marine Corps.10 The Unbeliever tells the story of Phil, a privileged young man who enlists to fight with the troops in the trenches of France, armed with a general irreligiousness, profound prejudice against those of the lower class, and hatred of all Germans. Eventually injured in action and lying on the battlefield amid the dead while the shells are still falling, Phil pledges to use his life for the Lord’s work if he is saved. Before he falls unconscious, he receives a vision of a white-robed Christ walking amid the dead (in a scene reminiscent of that in Ince’s Civilization). Phil’s newfound faith is tested immediately, however, when he awakes to find that his own hospital bed is flanked by those containing injured German soldiers. Indeed, the disarming of Phil’s prejudice (see Figure 10.5) is only accomplished when Jesus reappears at his bedside to remind him (in an intertitle) to “love your enemies” (Mt. 5:44; Lk. 6:27, 35). Far more noteworthy than the scene itself was the objection to the scene by none other than Professor Shailer Mathews, Dean of the University of Chicago’s Divinity School and noted liberal and progressive.11 Perhaps worried that Jesus’s encouragement to “love your enemies” might hamper the recruitment of marines to kill America’s enemies in Europe, Dean Mathews insisted that the intertitle be removed, with the result that in surviving prints, while Phil is granted a vision of the Prince of Peace, the Jesus of this already silent film is—without his intertitle—rendered more silent still.12 Mathews’s objection underlines among other things, how dramatically Hollywood and the liberal religious establishment realigned to support the war rather than object to it once American troops set sail for France.

132

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Figure 10.5  Jesus disarms Phil’s hatred of the German enemy in The Unbeliever (1918).

Germany 1923: Those who live by the sword In contrast to Jesus’s very brief cameos in the films of Griffith, Ince, and Crosland during the war, when Jesus was eventually resurrected in cinema in the early 1920s, he was once again the star familiar to prewar audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Inspired by the medieval passion play, filmic representations of Christ’s life and passion had been some of the longest, most expensive, and most watched films of the “silent era,” from the spring of 1897 right up until the beginning of the First World War (on the silent Jesus, see Shepherd 2016). But having failed to keep America out of the war, the filmic Jesus proved of little interest to American studios in the postwar years, which meant that Jesus’s return to the screen took place in Europe instead—not in France, where Pathé Frères had churned out filmic passions with quite remarkable regularity right up until 1914, but instead in Germany, in whose late-blossoming film industry, Jesus appeared in the early 1920s for the first time (see Zwick 2016). Of these appearances, the most interesting for our purposes is I.N.R.I., a film shot in the summer of 1923 under the supervision of Robert Wiene, the acclaimed director of that quintessential expression of German expressionist cinema, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 1920) (Jung and Schatzberg 1999). Rather than adapting the gospel traditions, Wiene’s I.N.R.I. depends on Peter Rosegger’s 1905 novel of the same name, in which the gospel narrative flows from the pen of a condemned prisoner, Konrad Ferleitner, sitting in his jail cell. Beginning with the pronouncement that Ferleitner will hang, the novel’s opening chapter moves swiftly to the convicted man’s incarceration, carefully concealing how or why he has killed, but allowing one of his guards to wonder, “how this gentle creature could have committed such a crime” (1905: 6). Calling for a priest, the condemned man relates



“Blessed Are the Peacemakers”

133

his parents’ early death and the loss of a brother, an apprenticeship with a joiner that fails due to an excess of reading and dreaming, and a period of wandering that leads to Hamburg. Recalling that he fell in with anarchists, Ferleitner also admits shooting someone with a revolver—an act which he grudgingly admits is deserving of the death sentence. Moments later, Ferleitner asks for a copy of the gospels: “My mother had one and used to read it aloud and explain it” (1905: 13). When the priest maintains that the scripture “must be explained by experts” and instead sends him a prayer book and religious manuals, Ferleitner’s only comfort remains the memory of his mother’s sacred stories from Jesus’s life. Indeed, when the judge appears with news that an appeal of Ferleitner’s conviction is before the king, the prisoner asks for paper, ink, and pens and suddenly seeing a vision of Jesus in his cell, commits himself to writing Jesus’s story, reassuring the reader that if it was not always the historical Jesus as Saviour [sic], it was the Saviour in whom men believed become historical, since he affected the world’s history through the hearts of men. . . . We read in the Gospels that Jesus appeared at different times and to different men in different forms. . . . As long as it is the Jesus of love and trust, it is the right Jesus. (1905: 29)

Impressed by Ferleitner’s literary efforts, the priest disappears in search of a title and a publisher and returns with “Glad Tidings.” Ferleitner mistakes the proposed title for news of his release, which does indeed arrive shortly, but only after Ferleitner dies peacefully in prison (1905: 339–40). Given that I.N.R.I. was published in English in New York in 1905, it is perhaps not surprising that aspects of both Ince’s film and especially Griffith’s bear more than a passing resemblance to elements of Rosegger’s work. Like Intolerance’s “Modern story,” Rosegger’s novel focuses on the fate of a young man who arrives in the city and falls in with the wrong people; in both cases, the young man is implicated in a killing—a crime for which both men are pronounced guilty. In both Intolerance and Rosegger’s novel, the knowledge that the men are not guilty in the usual sense (or indeed in the Boy’s case, at all) justifies efforts to seek a reprieve for the condemned; and in both cases the reprieve arrives, even if for Ferleitner it comes too late. Ince’s Civilization too tells the story of an innocent man incarcerated who like Rosegger’s Ferleitner also dies in his cell. Most strikingly, both also have spiritually transformative visions of Jesus. Yet, for all these films’ similarities to Rosegger’s novel, in formal terms, they differ significantly from it: instead of mere cameos or fragments, Rosegger’s novel places Ferleitner’s vision of Christ’s life and passion at its center with the contemporary story of the anarchist’s transformation furnishing only the frame—a structure included when the German firm, Neumann Productions, acquired the rights to film I.N.R.I. in 1923.13 In an interview published in Filmwoche to coincide with the film’s 1923 Christmas release, Hans Neumann, the film’s producer, emphasized that his intention in producing the film was not unrelated to the postwar turmoil in Germany (Zwick 2016: 220–21). Hoping that the film might both rehabilitate Germany’s reputation and offer ethical and spiritual direction, Neumann noted:

134

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

We are a people defeated in war, many foreign countries are accusing us of barbarism and quarrelsomeness, we are slandered! So I hope that I.N.R.I. will open the world’s eyes to the fact that we have grasped the true sense of Christian humanity.14

This intention inflects the film’s depiction of Christ’s life and passion (see Zwick 2016). Unlike Rosegger’s novel, which devotes nine chapters to the depiction of Christ’s birth and early years, Wiene’s film offers a very brief, stereotyped treatment of the annunciation, nativity, and an only slightly amplified version of the young Jesus teaching in the temple. The portrayal of Jesus’s ministry and death follows, with the most dramatic departure from the canonical Jesus of the prewar cinema being I.N.R.I.’s extended depiction of the Sermon on the Mount. As Zwick observes (2016: 223–24), Judas enjoys a prominence within the film exceeding his enhancement in Rosegger’s novel. Like Rosegger’s Judas, the film’s Judas betrays Jesus to force the latter’s hand into militant revolt (Jung and Schatzberg 1999: 107). Yet Wiene goes further in consistently setting Judas apart from the other disciples, not least in the scene of the Sermon on the Mount, when at its end Judas steps forward and says in an intertitle: “Let us spread the news each man to his neighbor—for this is truly the Messiah!” (see Figure 10.6). Judas’s presumption of Jesus’s political messiahship leads to his association with the Zealots, who expect Jesus to overthrow the Romans. The people’s subsequent recollection of Jesus’s teaching (from the Sermon on the Mount) that “one should love one’s enemies” shows this to be a misunderstanding. And indeed, such sentiments sit well with Wiene’s decision to have Jesus, after his Jerusalem entry, rebuke Judas’s invitation to rebel with the gospel saying, “Give Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and God what belongs to God” (Zwick 2016: 222). Weine’s political and potentially violent Judas (and Zealots) is thus a foil for the film’s apolitical, nonviolent Jesus who

Figure 10.6  Judas in I.N.R.I. (1923).



“Blessed Are the Peacemakers”

135

clearly represents Neumann and Wiene’s hopes for postwar Germany’s sociopolitical situation.15 Their desire to allow the cinematic Jesus to speak to the tumult and violence of the Weimar Republic is also reflected in their decision to include Rosegger’s frame narrative in the film, as Neumann’s own description of it makes clear: The carpenter Ferleitner, an anarchist and nihilist, wishes to serve mankind by assassinating a high government official. He is arrested, put on trial and condemned to death. Ferleitner considers himself a modern Christ who must sacrifice his life for his mission. The night before his execution, he attempts to attain clarity about his idealism, which he feels is misunderstood by society, by writing out the life of Jesus. In so doing, he recognizes his error and realizes that salvation cannot come through acts of violence but only through self-sacrifice and love of one’s neighbor. With this new clarity about his own deed and the meaning of the Christian gospel, he accepts the death sentence with composure.16

Neumann (and Wiene with him) may well have hoped that the film might find a sympathetic audience among cinemagoers weary of the insurrectionist turmoil of postwar Germany. Unfortunately, for them and the film, such hopes were soon proven to be very much in vain. When I.N.R.I. came before the Censorship Board in Berlin, they objected to the contemporary frame narrative (compare Mathews’s rather different complaint regarding The Unbeliever, above).17 A spokesman for the Reichskommissariat for the oversight of Public Law and Order voiced his concern that, armed with the contemporary frame narrative, the film might influence a not inconsequential number of our people in such a way that it would encourage them to intervene, like this man, in the political circumstances. Therefore from the standpoint of public order and security, I would like to propose not to show the film in this form, since certain people’s ideas would be reinforced through such a film.18

While such objections might sound overblown, it should not be forgotten—and evidently had not been forgotten by some in Berlin—that assassinations had been an increasingly popular weapon of especially right-wing extremists since the war.19 Members of the right-wing Organisation Consul had assassinated Matthias Erzberger, a leading politician of the Weimar Republic, two years earlier, and Walther Rathenau, the foreign secretary, in 1922, while the former chancellor Philip Scheidemann narrowly escaped a fatal poisoning. So heightened were sensitivities by 1923 that the board objected to Wiene’s depiction of Rosegger’s political assassin, even though in the film, the latter was caught, incarcerated, convicted, and also either executed or converted to true Christianity to boot (depending on how the film version ended). Indeed, it would not be surprising if some or all of these latter points were in Wiene’s mind when he was summoned before the board to consider changing or perhaps abandoning the frame narrative due to the risks it was thought to pose. At any rate, the director stood his ground and refused

136

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

to eliminate the “political murder” from the film on the grounds that the “sense of the whole film would thus be distorted or destroyed.”20 Such a stand underlines the strength of Wiene and Neumann’s conviction that a simple depiction of Christ’s life and passion would not do—and that the frame narrative was an essential ingredient in allowing the good news of Jesus’s preference for spiritual transformation over violent political revolution to speak to the particularities and turmoil of postwar Germany. Whether persuaded by Wiene’s appeal or not, the board agreed four days later to the film’s release with the contemporary frame narrative (Jung and Schatzberg 1999: 110). Ironically, while the frame narrative survived the censor’s scissors, Wiene’s story of the converted assassin eventually fell prey to the premiere’s critics, who lamented both its poor acting and its ponderous moralism (Zwick 2016: 219). Indeed, later reviewers’ overwhelming silence regarding the modern story suggests the probability that after the premiere the frame narrative was rarely if ever shown in Germany nor perhaps even beyond its borders (Jung and Schatzberg 1999: 110). While the film does not appear to have been as successful at the box office as Neumann and Wiene might have hoped, the dramatic decline in assassinations in Germany from 1924 may have suggested to the filmmakers that even shorn of the frame narrative, the cinematic Jesus, which had failed to dissuade Americans from entering the conflict in 1917, may at least have dissuaded some Germans from resorting to the kind of assassinations that had led them into the Great War less than a decade before.

Notes 1 Drew (1986) offers the film’s most comprehensive (if insufficiently critical) treatment. 2 Tatum characterizes the Judean story’s seven segments as no more than “thematic footnotes” (2013: 37). 3 For treatments of the Judaean story, see Tatum (2013: 37–45), Shepherd (2013: 186–89), and Walsh (2016a: 181–87). 4 The full intertitle reads: “Celebrating the betrothal of Marguerite of Valois, sister of the King, to Henry of Navarre, royal Huguenot to insure peace in the place of intolerance.” 5 Indeed, British audiences perceived the sensationalism of the fall of Babylon as a denunciation of Prussian military aggression (Brown 1973: 177). 6 For an analysis of the film in the context of Ince’s life and work see Taves (2012). As with many Ince productions, the scenario was credited to Gardner Sullivan. 7 For a previous comparison of these two films, see Walsh (2016a: 190–92). 8 For discussion of this theme in biblical silents, see Shepherd (2013: 123–56). 9 Ince had already recut the film for its release in Britain (under the title of Civilization, Or What Every True Briton is Fighting For). 10 For a discussion of this film (and its reception) as an early instance of the American film industry’s depiction of the military, see Suid (2002: 17–23). 11 For an attempt to evaluate Mathews’s theology (including Christology) in light of later developments, see Lindsey (1997). 12 For other objections to the film in Chicago and George Kleine’s strategy in responding to them, see DeBauche (1997: 132–33).



“Blessed Are the Peacemakers”

137

13 While this reflects my viewing of a print at the British Film Institute, the discussion of the film’s production and reception depends largely on Jung and Schatzberg (1999: 105–12). 14 Neumann, cited in Ickles (1923: 2–5), which is translated and cited in Jung and Schatzberg (1999: 106). 15 The film thus anticipates the binary opposition between the apolitical, pacifist Jesus and the political and violent Zealots (often including Judas) evident in many (but not all) subsequent Jesus films. See Walsh (2012). On the issue of the historical Jesus and the Zealots, see Bammel and Moule (1985). 16 Neumann, cited in Ickles (1923: 2–5), translated and cited in Jung and Schatzberg (1999: 106), who also note (1999: 112n30) that later that same month the description offered in Die LichtBildBühne (December 29, 1923) suggests an ending in which Ferleitner dies in his cell rather than being executed. While it is not impossible that Neumann’s description reflects an earlier ending and that this latter source reflects an ending of the film revised to more closely resemble that of the novel, in the absence of even a single print containing the frame narrative, it is impossible to be certain. 17 The discussion here draws upon the treatment found in Jung and Schatzberg (1999: 109–11). 18 Minutes of the Proceedings of the Censorship Board, Berlin, November 15, 1923, as cited in and translated by Jung and Schatzberg (1999: 110). 19 For a discussion of Emil Gumbel, who documented the extensive use of political murder during the Weimar years, see Brenner (2001: 68–76). 20 Minutes of the Proceedings of the Censorship Board, Berlin, November 15, 1923, as cited in and translated by Jung and Schatzberg (1999: 110).

Works cited Bammel, Ernst, and C. F. D. Moule (1985), Jesus and the Politics of His Day, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brenner, Arthur D. (2001), Emil J. Gumbel: Weimar Pacifist and Professor, Boston: Humanities. Brown, Karl (1973), Adventures with D.W. Griffith, New York: Da Capo. Burnidge, Cara L. (2016), A Peaceful Conquest: Woodrow Wilson, Religion, and the New World Order, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cremer, H. (1903), A Reply to Harnack on the Essence of Christianity: Lectures Delivered in the Summer of 1901 Before Students of All Faculties in the University of Greifswald, trans. B. Pick, New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls. DeBauche, Leslie M. (1997), Reel Patriotism: The Movies and World War I, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Diefenthaler, Jon (1986), H. Richard Niebuhr: A Lifetime of Reflections on the Church and the World, Macon: Mercer University Press. Dorrien, Gary (2003), The Making of American Liberal Theology: Liberal Theology, Idealism, Realism and Modernity, 1900-1950, Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Drew, William (1986), D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance: Its Genesis and Its Vision, Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Gorrell, Donald K. (1988), The Age of Social Responsibility: The Social Gospel in the Progressive Era, 1900–1920, Macon: Mercer University Press.

138

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Griffith, David W. (1916), The Rise and Fall of Free Speech in America, Los Angeles. Harnack, Adolf von (1901), What Is Christianity? Sixteen Lectures Delivered in the University of Berlin during the Winter-Term 1899-1901, trans. Thomas Baily Saunders, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Jung, Uli, and Walter Schatzberg (1999), Beyond Caligari: The Films of Robert Wiene, New York and Oxford: Berghahns. Lindsey, William (1997), Shailer Mathews’s Lives of Jesus: The Search for a Theological Foundation for the Social Gospel, Albany: SUNY Press. Macintosh, Douglas C. (1914), “What is the Christian Religion?” Harvard Theological Review, 7 (1): 16–46. Niebuhr, H. Richard ([1937] 1988), The Kingdom of God in America, New York: Harper & Row. O’Dell, Paul (1970), Griffith and the Rise of Hollywood, with the assistance of Anthony Slide, New York: Castle. Rauschenbusch, Walter (1916), The Social Principles of Jesus, New York: Grosset and Dunlap. Rauschenbusch, Walter (1917), A Theology for the Social Gospel, New York: Abingdon. Rosegger, Peter (1905), I.N.R.I.: A Prisoner’s Story of the Cross, trans. E. Lee, New York: McClure, Phillips. Shepherd, David J. (2013), The Bible on Silent Film: Spectacle, Story and Scripture in the Early Cinema, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shepherd, David J., ed. (2016), The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927), New York: Routledge. Singer, Ben (2001), Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts, New York: Columbia University Press. Smucker, Donovan E. (1994), The Origins of Walter Rauschenbusch’s Social Ethics, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Suid, Lawrence H. (2002), Guts & Glory: The Making of the American Military Image in Film, rev. and exp. ed., Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Tatum, Barnes (2013), Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years, Salem: Polebridge. Taves, Brian (2012), Thomas Ince: Hollywood’s Independent Pioneer, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Walsh, Richard (2012), “The Zealots in the Jesus Film Tradition,” in Reinhold Zwick (ed.), Religion und Gewalt im Bibelfilm, Film und Theologie 20, 99–126, Marburg: Schüren. Walsh, Richard (2016a), “The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915) and Intolerance (Triangle/Wark, 1916): Griffith’s Talismanic Jesus,” in David Shepherd (ed.), The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927), 179–99, New York: Routledge. Warfield, Benjamin B. (1914), “The Essence of Christianity and the Cross of Christ,” Harvard Theological Review, 7 (4): 538–94. Zahniser, Keith A. (2005), Steel City Gospel: Protestant Laity and Reform in Progressive-Era Pittsburgh, New York: Routledge. Zwick, Reinhold (2016), “Der Galiläer (Express-Film, 1921) and I.N.R.I. (Neumann Film, 1923): The Silence of Jesus in the German Cinema,” in David Shepherd (ed.), The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927), 211–35, New York: Routledge.

11

German Jesus Movies Reinhold Zwick

Jesus Christ is not a prominent figure in German cinema. Although not well known internationally, the few German Jesus movies display some remarkable features and innovative approaches to biblical and Christian tradition. Gospel harmonies in a historicizing mode have been absent since the silent era’s Dimitri Buchowetzki’s Der Galiläer (The Galilean 1921) and Robert Wiene’s I.N.R.I. (1923). They both have anti-Jewish traits and emphasize Jesus’s divine nature (see Zwick 2016). The movies considered here scrutinize that divine nature, and also sometimes reflect provocatively on Jesus’s impact on contemporary life and society. The most frequent cinematic forms are actualizations and imaginations of a second coming of Christ.

Actualizations: Pilatus und andere and Jesus Cries Two of the most recent German Jesus movies transfer (actualize) his passion to twentieth-century Germany: 1) Pilatus und andere—Ein Film für Karfreitag (Pilate and Others—A Movie for Good Friday 1972), directed by the famous Polish film artist Andrzej Wajda and with Polish actors in the main roles, but produced primarily for German public television; 2) Jesus Cries (2015), partially financed by crowdfunding and directed by Brigitte Maria Mayer, who started her career as an art photographer. After I.N.R.I., half a century passed before Jesus returned in a German movie, Wajda’s Pilatus und andere—Ein Film für Karfreitag. The movie freely adapts the Pilate storyline in Mikhail Bulgakov’s famous allegorical novel, The Master and Margarita ([1966] 1996).1 The Gospel of John’s account of Pilate and Jesus inspire both the novel and the film—with a procurator who considers Jesus innocent and wants to release him, but finally succumbs to pressure from the Jewish authorities. The movie opens with a parabolic prologue featuring a flock of sheep brought to a slaughterhouse, which introduces the Holocaust theme, revisited several times, most obviously by locating Jesus’s death sentence on the Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg, with Pilate standing on the Führer’s tribune. The story starts with Jesus’s trial before Pilate and ends some days after his death; it is divided into three chapters of nearly the same length. The three intertitles that open these segments are Pilate, Matthew, and Judas, but the central characters are the Roman governor and Jesus.

140

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

When Yeshua Ha-Nozri, as both novel and film call him, is brought to Pilate, he denies calling for the temple’s destruction and entering Jerusalem in spectacle. According to Jesus, Levi Matthew, who is a former pimp and his only follower, cannot be trusted as a witness for these events, because his daybook always distorts reality. Judas, a paid agent of the Sanhedrin, has denounced Jesus, after first meeting him two days previously in a gambling hall. Candidly—or naively—Jesus repeats to Pilate what he told Judas about the state: “I have explained to him, that each power does violence to man, and that the time will come, when there is no more power, neither a Caesarian nor any else. And that all people will live in a kingdom of truth and justice.”2 Although Pilate approves the Sanhedrin’s sentence, he still considers Jesus harmless and hopes he will receive the Pesach-amnesty. But Caiaphas insists that Barabbas receive the pardon, exhorting Pilate not to oppose the Sanhedrin on this point. Daunted, Pilate sentences Jesus to death against his conscience. Immediately, Jesus goes to the cross—standing on a cart as it moves through a modern city, escorted both by Roman soldiers in antique armory and by motorcycle policemen. Matthew, Jesus’s only disciple, follows this gloomy procession. He wants to save his master, but his efforts to stab him fail. When Jesus is crucified on a waste hill in a large dump, Matthew fervently prays to God to rescue his son, but switches to laments and blasphemous accusations as God is silent. Observing his master’s agony from afar, he tries to record everything and finally repents of his rage against God. After the death of Jesus, accompanied by an eclipse as in the Synoptic Gospels, and after the soldiers have left this weird Golgotha, Matthew cuts Jesus from the cross and hides his corpse in a quarry. After being informed of the death of Jesus, Pilate tries to extinguish all traces of him so that his power might not increase. He orders Judas’s execution and corrupts Matthew by offering him a position in his library at Caesarea. With Judas dead, Matthew’s plans for revenge become superfluous and he accepts. In the penultimate scene, Matthew sits in a stylish office with fetish furniture, designed by Allan Jones in his 1970 series “Hatstand, Table and Chair.” But Matthew repents once more, and the movie closes with him carrying a large cross alongside a superhighway. The clashes of ancient and modern world in Wajda’s mise-en-scène and the many enigmatic images—like the insertion of Jesus sitting in an airplane during the Golgotha-sequence—explain why Pilatus und andere was not well received. However, in 2006, Wajda selected this movie for a special screening on the occasion of receiving a Golden Bear lifetime achievement award at the Berlin Film Festival. A few years later, he affirmed this decision: Of all the films I have directed in the West, in my view two are especially wellmade. These were first Danton and then Pilatus und andere, which I unfortunately prepared for German TV, for the ZDF. This institution was as “socialistic” as the Polish Cinema. They could not use the product properly. If the movie at that time would have had a chance in the cinemas, I believe it could have become a success. (quoted in Fründt 1991)

Despite Wajda’s enthusiastic self-appraisal, most contemporary reviews were negative, if not scathing with regard to the anachronistic juxtapositions. In his review titled,



German Jesus Movies

141

“No Film for Good Friday”—subverting the film’s original subtitle—the critic of the important German weekly Die Zeit spoke of “culinary gags” and “monstrosities” (Momos 1972). The visual gimmicks repeatedly coincide with tensions in narrative logic. The most offensive of these deal with the Jews. While Wajda’s prologue insinuates the Holocaust by using the Nuremburg Nazi grounds as the film’s location, his portrayal of Caiaphas follows the obsolete pattern that he alone—with his (off-screen) Sanhedrin followers and Jerusalem people3—is guilty of Jesus’s death. Further, Caiaphas wears a long black caftan and a fur-trimmed cusp cap—like those of the East European Jews who suffered the most from Hitler’s genocide. More convincing are the interpretations of Pilate and, to a lesser extent, of Jesus. Pilate is a harsh, embittered, sick, old man, but meeting Jesus changes him. Evaluating Jesus as harmless, he vainly tries to spare him. After the crucifixion, Pilate has a visionary reencounter with Jesus walking on water. Jesus greets him with open arms and consoles him: “Now we stay together forever.” But Jesus proclaims that cowardice is the worst crime—a leitmotif of Bulgakov’s novel—and thus also condemns the weak Pilate. Jesus himself is not charismatic, but a soft, naive, quirky preacher, reminiscent of the well-known “holy fools” of Russian tradition. Despite his opinions on society, freedom, and justice, he consistently loves and forgives everybody, even his pursuers. With his loving, humble, and utterly nonviolent appearance, Wajda’s Jesus is quite the opposite of Brigitte Maria Mayer’s protagonist in Jesus Cries (2015), which premiered at the Bogota International Film Festival 2015. Mayer describes her movie: Jesus Cries narrates the story of an insurgent, of an enraged Jesus, but also the story of his disciples, who after his gruesome death struggle for his meaning and for the future also of their own utopias. It is they, who found the church. I wanted to make a movie, which transfers a 2000-year old story into the here and now, a modern painting of a saint, in which the images and the atmosphere are as important as the plot. (quoted from an unpublished text in the author’s archive)

This new Jesus is vibrant, starting his sayings with a programmatic “I am the insurrection,” Mayer’s interpretation of the famous logion, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Mt. 10:34 NRSV). A major inspiration for this theme may be Jesus’s similar characterization in the radical restaging of the Oberammergau Passion Play in 2000 and 2010, for whose official companion books Mayer provided the photographs. Jesus Cries covers the timespan from the Last Supper to the resurrection, but eschews a linear order for flashbacks and flashforwards, sometimes presented in a dreamlike, visionary mode. In fact, the film begins with a symbolic representation of the resurrection, which “continues” the film’s final sequence in which a boat with Christ’s dead body drifts out to a lake. In the opening, the same boat rests empty on the lake’s banks. This frame gently establishes an aura of Easter hope for fragmented, mixed-up episodes, which refer to biblical and sometimes apocryphal scenes (notably the Gospel of Peter). The film reworks the scenes by adapting them to an imagined future, very close to the present. The movie is entirely shot in Berlin and its surroundings, but

142

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

interlaced with documentary scenes of riots in Istanbul and Rio de Janeiro, which create the atmosphere of a chaotic, violent society. A pulsating soundtrack and well-calculated images, lighting, and colors—reflecting the eye of an art photographer—present Jesus’s passion in an aesthetically innovative manner. It is the story of a nonviolent, but dedicated revolutionary, who is haunted, tortured, and killed by the ruling system. The pivotal agent of this system is Caiaphas. Pilate and the Roman occupation have no modern equivalent. But Mayer does not stage the high priest as a Jewish authority. With his light summer suit and clerical collar, he looks like a young Jesuit, but he acts like a Scientology Thetan, who tolerates not the slightest deviation from his pure doctrine. Thus, Caiaphas does not represent the Jewish people, but stands for a religiously disguised authority claiming absolute power. This power can be interpreted as an economic power structure, because Mayer’s Sanhedrin looks as if its (male and female) members came directly from a reception in the management floor to the “meeting” about Jesus. Of course, the continued use of the name Caiaphas can still offend. But the film surpasses this reference to the dramaturgy of the gospels, which establishes the high priest as the principal (human) antagonist of Jesus, through its reflections on ideology, power, and violence, which transcends concrete religions and aims for a structural level. Another actualization, which stages Jesus’s scourging as a torture scenario with clear references to Abu Ghraib, is no more anti-Roman than Mayer’s Caiaphas is anti-Jewish. Instead, the story of Jesus’s passion becomes a forum for present and timeless questions, without letting the religious dimension fall by the wayside. This is particularly evident in the disciples’ conversations during the depression of Holy Saturday, when they are anxious, desperate, and almost resigned (see Figure 11.1). As in some apocryphal gospels, Mary Magdalene encourages the community. In these scenes, Jesus Cries has a distinct meditative and spiritual quality, which assists the viewer through some moments of strong violence. Of course, the viewer

Figure 11.1  The disciples and Mary Magdalene in hiding in Jesus Cries (2015).



German Jesus Movies

143

also knows from the beginning that death is not the ultimate border; the resurrection overthrows it.

The Second Coming: Das Geheimnis, Jesus liebt mich, and Shorts While Brigitte Maria Mayer transfers the story of Jesus’s passion into the present, other directors rework the (“old”) notion of Christ’s second coming, not in the final apocalyptic battle, but in our everyday life (compare Lk. 18:8b: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” NRSV). Like Fyodor Dostoevsky’s parable, “The Grand Inquisitor,” embedded in his great novel, The Brothers Karamazov ([1880] 2003), this return of Christ probes the present state of faith—both in individuals and in society—and the church’s preservation of his heritage. Rudolf Thome, one of the senior auteur filmmakers of the New German Cinema, whose low-budget art films have been part of the arthouse scene since the late 1960s, introduced this second-coming theme to German cinema. Das Geheimnis (The Secret 1995), his only movie with an explicit Jesus figure, was the fourth part of his cycle, Forms of Love (1990), an easygoing romantic comedy, a “carrousel of love,”4 located in the Uckermark, a sparsely populated countryside north of Berlin. Lydia and Walter, newly in love, drive out of the capital to visit Anita, Walter’s former wife. Anita has retreated to her farm to paint and to seek God in meditation and prayer. Referring to Jn 7:34, Walter had prophesied to her, “Those who seek, will not find me—is written in the Bible,” and he has turned out to be right. Except for Lydia, who decides to follow Anita for a while in her eremitic living, all the others leave the farm. On Lydia’s first night alone, an elderly, haggard man bearing a heavy wooden cross arrives at her door. Lydia invites the silent stranger in for dinner. The visitor, listed in the credits as “Man with the Cross,” introduces himself, “I am Jesus Christ,” and tells Lydia that he will disclose to her “the secret of the universe.” Consternated, Lydia retorts that she is Jewish and does not believe in him. Moreover, she “gets along quite well without a secret.” During the “(First) Supper,” the stranger hands Lydia spaghetti and red wine, and afterward, following her initiative, accompanies her to her room and into her bed. The next morning the stranger is inexplicably lying dead besides her. Thome comments, “I didn’t want to let him die on the cross. This would have been absurd.” When Lydia tries to show the dead body to her friends, it has disappeared. Only the bloody sheets and the cross in front of the house bear witness to the stranger’s presence. Months later Lydia is pregnant with a boy, whose paternal ancestry is uncertain. She wants to name him “Jesus,” but that desire could be explained by the completely different kind of love she has felt for the stranger. The secret he confided to her was only one word, “Love,” followed by “I love you.” Thome’s discreet direction and Marquart Bohm’s modest, but forceful performance of “Jesus” keep this encounter from sliding into something embarrassing or offensive.5 In the context of various allusions to passion and resurrection, the “secret” disappoints at first. But it gains meaning when connected to the farewell speeches in

144

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

John (particularly 13:34-35), to 1 Jn 4:7-21, and to the “Song of Love” in 1 Corinthians 13. These famous texts highlight love as the quintessence of Jesus’s message and charge this word with meaning. The Gospel of John is also predominant in the passion storyline of Roberto Rossellini’s Il messia (The Messiah 1975), which Thome had studied thoroughly for his article on the Italian director (Thome 1988). As Thome has said, no other Rossellini film “more influenced him than this one.” Like Rossellini, Thome, who does not “consider himself an atheist,” wants to take the Christian faith and its basic story very seriously. Il messia depicts a markedly human Jesus and thematizes the supernatural in an entirely unspectacular mode. Thome also tries to make “the mystic real” and to “show the most ordinary and the most sublime things in the same simple and natural manner” (Oplustil 1995: 38). The crucial night meeting between Jesus and Lydia also inverts the initial situation of another of Rossellini’s films, Il miracolo (The Miracle), the second part of L’amore (Ways of Love 1948). In this tragedy, a hobo, pretending to be the Holy Ghost, seduces a naive girl. When she becomes pregnant, she believes her child to be a gift from God. By contrast, in Das Geheimnis, Lydia initiates the sex. Further, while Rossellini’s hobo is a pretender, Thome’s mise-en-scène—particularly the stranger’s mysterious disappearance—supports the notion that the stranger is Jesus. Lydia’s attempt for an erotic encounter with the stranger reminds one even more of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema (1968), in which an entire family sexually desires a mysterious divine visitor—and is deeply affected by his presence. In both Pasolini’s and Thome’s films, the stranger actuates a process of metanoia. In Teorema, the members of the bourgeois family cannot bear the knowledge of their true selves their intimate encounters with the stranger give them.6 The family falls apart and its members break internally. Thome, however, depicts the inner change more positively: the encounter with the stranger and the birth of the child (however the child is connected to the stranger) puts an end to the nonbinding flirting and deepens the relationship of the couples. Florian David Fitz’s comic Jesus liebt mich (Jesus Loves Me 2012), in which Fitz also played Jesus, was far more popular than Das Geheimnis. With almost 700,000 viewers, Jesus liebt mich is the greatest box-office success of a German Jesus movie to date. This result depends partly on the great popularity of David Safier’s novel of the same title (2008), on which Fitz based his script. The title sequence establishes the apocalypse as a frame, as a priest Gabriel performs a grim “baroque” rod-puppet play on Revelation’s final battle for frightened children. Gabriel is the former archangel, who fell in love with a woman and switched to a human existence, quite like the Gabriel in the famous Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire 1987). But this Gabriel’s love did not last; he became lonely and alcoholic. In sharp contrast to his play, Gabriel’s parish, a small town in contemporary northern Germany, lives in deep peace. Then Jeshua (as listed in the German credits) arrives to examine its state of faith and—if that turns out poorly—to launch the apocalypse, which a few, fanatical inhabitants already believe is imminent. The devil, who also knows that the turn of eras could happen soon, is also present in the town seeking souls and allies. The incognito Jeshua, easily identifiable by his (humorously described) “classical” Nazarene appearance, is a good-looking and very sympathetic figure, but he is also



German Jesus Movies

145

naive, strange, a Percival, completely ignorant of the modern world. He stays with the confused Gabriel. As he is a carpenter, he repairs the housetop of the odd couple— Werner, an elderly, divorced man, and Svetlana, a young, attractive, and typically Russian woman. Despite tensions with her same-aged stepmother, Werner’s daughter Marie has returned to live in the house after the breakup of her marriage. Marie falls in love with the charming, empathetic Jeshua, and he is also attracted to her because she reminds him of another Marie, Mary Magdalene. With the help of Gabriel, Marie gradually realizes that her beloved is Jesus himself and things become complicated. Jeshua becomes more human in his feelings, but does not lose his divine powers, which are most evident in ironically broken miracles (e.g., Jeshua walks on water in order to save Marie from drowning). Marie wants to convince Jeshua of the ongoing goodness of humankind and offers herself as a representative example. She tries to appear deeply pious and altruistic, but her love disturbs her efforts. Her heart is still much more with Jeshua than with the wicked and poor. To make matters worse, the devil entices Marie to forget goodness and to make Jeshua fully human so that she can live an earthly life with him. Meanwhile, the apocalypse starts, everything gets chaotic, and Jeshua finally fights Matrix-like with the devil. Then suddenly the image freezes and Marie is translated to an intimate dialog with an old, white-bearded God. They discuss questions of theodicy like God’s omnipotence, evil’s origin, and the human propensity to sin. Appealing to her responsibility for the world, God finally convinces Marie to set aside her love and winds up the world clock again. Back on earth Marie finds life going on normally, as if the apocalypse had never started or only happened in a time loop. After a sentimental farewell, Jeshua walks away in the long white robe he wore in his first scene. During the end titles, he waves to Marie from heaven. Jesus liebt mich is diverting and amusing, often witty but without coarse gimmickry, often daring but never irreverent. Its many allusions to other movies entertain cineastes. Its theological topics and impulses for reflection also make it interesting for religious education. In interviews Fitz liked to compare his movie to the Trojan horse: outwardly it is a comedy, but inside lurk serious questions concerning Christology and the image of God. Many lay persons have such questions, and exegetes and systematic theologians should take them seriously as they indicate problems in communicating scientific reasoning and mediation in religious education and pastoral work. In rethinking the figure of Jesus Christ, Jesus liebt mich explores such questions as the scope of Jesus’s “true humanity” (including the precarious themes of eros and sexuality), the contemporary relevance of Jesus, and, by operating with subordinating ideas, the relationship of the heavenly Father and his Son. Further, the funny depictions of some miracles reflect the great problems in communicating a reliable understanding of them, which rescues them from the ridiculous and preserves them as a valuable pillar of Jesus’s proclamation of the kingdom of God (for more on the film, see Wörther 2016).7 Equally important is the film’s reflection on goodness and compassion, evil and sin, divine retribution, the Last Judgment, salvation, and theodicy, with a God arguing à la Leibnitz about “the best of all possible worlds.” All these and other questions, which are wrapped in the format of a light comedy, can be recognized by any audience interested in religion and faith. I have experienced this myself when I introduced a

146

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

screening of Jesus liebt mich at the German Catholic Day 2014 and moderated the discussion afterward. Fitz’s film was the only one overcrowded in the Jesus movie retrospective, and dozens of people could not attend the screening. The mostly young viewers, but also a group of nuns in habit who occupied a whole row, were eager to talk extensively about the film’s theological challenges and took up almost all of the aspects mentioned above. The second-coming motif has inspired other filmmakers, working mostly in comedy and shorts. In its cast of key figures, including Satan, its contemporary urban setting, and its postponement of the apocalypse, Fitz’s film resembles Hal Hartley’s The Book of Life (1998). Hartley’s “long” short for the arthouse is more sophisticated, but both films are modern, miniature mystery plays, with Jesus and the devil competing for human souls. A similar tale is the short Mensch, Jesus! (Man, Jesus!) with which Cornelius Meckseper completed his film studies in 1999. Although it was only shown several times on TV, it became quite popular in religious education for the same reasons Fitz’s film did. Mensch, Jesus! also seems an important precursor for Jesus liebt mich. In fact, the very similar initial situation and basic love story plot give the later film a hint of plagiarism. Here, too, a charming, good-looking, naive Jesus returns to a contemporary German town (Stuttgart) to evaluate the status of Christian faith and to start the apocalypse if it is poor. Satan is also in town, residing under its most evil place—in the cellar of the finance authority—and eager for a final duel, a revenge for his defeat at the first coming. After some positive impressions in meetings with citizens, Jesus becomes more and more frustrated. Finally, two bullies batter him. Delirious in the underground—a quotation from Jésus de Montréal (1989)—Jesus is taken by a beautiful young woman named Christa to her apartment where she lives as a single mother with her daughter. Her brother employs the carpenter Jesus in his joinery and things go well. But Jesus notices in the news that catastrophes increase rapidly all over the world and knows that the apocalypse has started, whose “starting kit” he had carried in a box stolen by the thugs. The quite earthly Jesus seeks the final confrontation with Satan, whom he rightly assumes has the box, defeats him, and sends the highly dangerous “kit” to the pope for safekeeping. As Jesus and Christa have fallen in love, the Son of God stays on earth. With the off-screen recitation of a typical fairy tale ending, the last shot shows their lovely baby—with a halo. This ending certainly is more “incorrect” than that of Jesus liebt mich, but the comic tone keeps it from being really offensive. Mensch, Jesus! raises many issues dealt with by Jesus liebt mich, but, like Hartley, Meckseper lays more stress on the question of how the Last Judgment can coexist with Jesus’s message of love and forgiveness and whether God is obligated to a simple formula of reward and punishment. Thus Mensch, Jesus! is also a Trojan horse, stimulating serious reasoning despite its outwardly playful form. Some other short movies on the second coming are officially distributed by Catholic dioceses’ media departments for screenings in schools and parishes and have become very popular. Among them are foreign productions, like Juliette Soubrier’s very restrained but forceful L’inconnu (The Unknown 2004), in which Jesus knocks on the door of a monastery on Christmas eve. The monks invite the stranger in for dinner. When they recognize him by his stigmata, they decide to avoid any change in their



German Jesus Movies

147

easy life and send him away, despite the vehement protests of a blind friar, who is the first to recognize him (like the healed blind men in the gospels). Similarly, in Tomas Villum Jensen and Anders Thomas Jensen’s Ernst & lyset (1996),8 a rather silly Jesus is back on earth, hitchhiking and trying to gather new disciples. The very first, who gives him a lift, fails because he is completely self-satisfied and resistant to any trace of transcendence, so Jesus abandons his project. Two more successful German shorts are also worth mentioning: Wunderbare Tage (Miraculous Days 2002) and Herr im Haus (Master in the House 2000). In his light comedy Wunderbare Tage, Matthias Kiefersauer narrates the efforts of a priest in a Bavarian village to increase and revive worship participation. With the help of a company of actors, he simulates a series of miraculous manifestations that arouse attention and fill the church again. But then Jesus appears, disturbs the performances, and makes it clear that faith cannot build on fake actions. In Herr im Haus, Gudrun Falke also starts her story with very sparsely attended worship services, but her priest is more fanatical about cleanliness. He is more inclined to dust than to console the few people who come to him. One day, when the solipsistic priest starts his choral, the crucified Jesus on the wall comes to life, climbs down from his cross, and walks out of the church, voting with his feet on this rundown discipleship.

Blasphemous interventions: Das Gespenst and Jesus—Der Film Almost twenty years earlier, Jesus left a cross in a nunnery in a movie that caused one of the greatest scandals in German cinema history:9 Herbert Achternbusch’s Das Gespenst (The Ghost 1982). Achternbusch also played Jesus. After its premiere, it was severely attacked by the German bishops, by the public prosecutor’s office, and by the minister of the interior, who denied the last payment of the state subsidy (which had been based on the much more harmless script). Vehement demands for banning the movie failed in Germany due to the clause of “artistic freedom,” but the film was rejected in many other countries, like Austria. The excitement arose primarily from the rude and sometimes disgusting mise-en-scène. Herbert Achternbusch (born 1938) had a Catholic upbringing in the Bavarian countryside, but later broke with the Christian faith. First a painter, his career gathered speed as an author of novels, plays, and movies, all of them influenced by the surrealistic wit of the legendary Bavarian comedian Karl Valentin. The starting point for Das Gespenst was Ernest Hemingway’s one-act “Today is Friday” (1927), staging the coarse tavern-dialogue of three slightly drunken Roman soldiers after the crucifixion.10 A shortened version is the movie’s last sequence, except Jesus, called “Ober,” takes the place of Hemingway’s nameless Jewish innkeeper. “Ober” is literally “waiter,” but it also alludes to “above,” and thus to the Son from above. Achternbusch introduces Jesus/Ober as a life-size Christ figure on a cross in a nunnery. The big cow’s tongue hanging out of his mouth immediately signals the movie’s irreverent character. But also from the beginning, serious questions are entangled within the blasphemous. In the first scene, the mother superior directs a long

148

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

lament to the crucified Jesus—the forty-second and the last there in the monastery— deploring that he “doesn’t care about anything” and that in contrast to him, the “model of all life,” the church is “the model of all sterility” (Achternbusch 1983: 7). Jesus cannot endure the monastery and leaves his cross, walking to a vegetable market in downtown Munich where ignorant citizens and two dull policemen confront him. Afterward, he strolls through the countryside with the mother superior. As Ober, he meets some of Hemingway’s Roman soldiers in a bar, which is decorated with the author’s portrait. Finally, before going on the road again, he has a conversation with a bishop.11 Jesus’s journey is the setting for a tenacious, sometimes impertinent scrutinizing of theological issues, mostly of Christological and ecclesiological character—and lurking behind the offensive tone are many popular questions and resentments. Achternbusch’s naive Jesus denies his institution of the Eucharist, the idea of the transubstantiation, and the reality of miracles. His ongoing pains from the crucifixion, his itching scars, and the unremovable crown of thorns indirectly point to the question of his suffering in the light of a seemingly unredeemed world. The assemblage of anti-religious stereotypes accompanies harsh criticism of a church, which has forgotten Jesus, worries more about power and taxes than about the poor, and turned the message of Jesus upside down. Paradigmatically Achternbusch’s bishop says, “Love is the greatest enemy of man. Love destroys any order,” and the cross “has been invented to get rid of the man, who had practiced love like no one else” (1983: 77). The director ironically understated that he wanted “softly to say good bye to Christianity” with Das Gespenst. But behind its often disgusting and blasphemous surface, the movie’s core witnesses to a deep frustration about the loss of the original idea of Jesus’s mission. One cannot similarly esteem Jesus—Der Film, shot entirely on Super-8. After its premiere at the 1986 Berlin Film Festival in the section “Internationales Forum des jungen Films,” it was shown in several other festivals. Later Michael Brynntrup toured with his Jesus—Der Film in Germany and sold it privately on videotape. The final version is a ninety-minute compilation of twenty-two episodes (arranged similarly to Matthew), while the first version was 145 minutes and thirty-seven episodes, a length fitting the ironic subtitle, Monumental Film on the Life and Suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ. The episodes were contributed by Brynntrup and (most) by filmmakers of the German counterculture scene. They differ extremely in style, but are unified by the thread of the biblical story, by Brynntrup constantly playing the protagonist (even in the nativity), and by a thoroughly derisive attitude, with a Jesus oscillating in the whole panoply between simple-minded crank and blood-thirsty vampire, but never in any theologically reasonable manner. The compilation is a gloomy document of a deepseated disgust with Christianity, rooted in damages incurred in a repressive religious education, in outrage over the church’s “sins,” or even simply in the lust for mockery and breaking taboos, but not in any idea about who Jesus is or for what he stands.

Conclusion Two silents are the only historicizing, feature German Jesus films. Even those are somewhat “irregular”: Der Galiläer adapts a passion play in Freiburg im Breisgau;



German Jesus Movies

149

I.N.R.I. is a highly stylized studio production. After these movies failed at the box office, efforts to approach Jesus historically came to a halt. (Italy and the United States continued the historical approach.) After a pause of half a century, a German production brought Jesus to television in 1972 with the help of a renowned Polish director. Andrzej Wajda’s Pilatus und andere shaped the style of later German Jesus movies, as he translated the biblical story into the present and used it as a platform for a discussion of current questions concerning Christ, church, and the state of faith in general, often focusing on Christianity’s modern relevance and impact. Only Jesus Cries, the most recent and probably most innovative film, opted for the format of a straightforward actualization. All others developed the notion of the second coming of Christ and worked with it comically (Das Geheimnis and Jesus liebt mich). Even the intentionally blasphemous Das Gespenst is a kind of second-coming movie. As different as they are in genre, style, and mood, what unifies these films is a lack of interest in historical reconstruction and biblical “correctness” as well as an eagerness for critical queries concerning Christology, ecclesiology, and iconography, to mention only the most important.12 With the exception of Das Gespenst (and the abysmal Jesus—Der Film), the movies display a basic sympathy for Jesus Christ. Their queries reflect the questions of contemporary people and should be taken seriously, even if they come wrapped in light comedy.

Notes 1 Aleksandar Petrovic also directed a version of this same novel in 1972, with an exceptionally ugly Jesus. The novel also influenced Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche’s Histoire de Judas, which won the ecumenical jury prize at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival. 2 All German movie dialogues and other German texts have been translated by the author. 3 Wajda inserts documentary footage of a contemporary mass demonstration into his staging of the Jerusalem crowds. 4 Rudolf Thome’s description and other quotations come from a copy of the press book in the author’s archive. 5 Bohm had collaborated with Thome from the beginning and unexpectedly offered himself for this Jesus part. 6 Like the Hebrew “jadah,” this knowledge suggests both cognition and sexual intercourse and thus grounds mystic reflections on the “bridal chamber.” 7 The threat of appearing ridiculous is higher in western Europe than in the United States, given its large number of evangelical Christians. 8 Anders Thomas Jensen later directed Adams æbler (Adam’s Apples 2005). 9 Only Willi Forst’s Die Sünderin (The Sinner 1951) created comparable excitement when shortly after the end of the Nazi-regime, it was seen as propaganda for euthanasia and assisted suicide. 10 Without knowing Achternbusch’s movie the well-known German New Testament scholar Martin Ebner also uses this scene as the last chapter of his successful book (2003: 215–18).

150

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

11 German filmmaker Werner Schroeter (1945–2010) plays the bishop. Also in 1982, he adapted Oskar Panizza’s 1895 play Das Liebeskonzil (The Love Council) for the screen. Panizza was imprisoned for blasphemy for a year. In both play and movie, Jesus is weak from Holy Communions, which both Panizza and Schroeter interpret cannibalistically (as in the misinterpretations in Jn 6:52-60). 12 Also notable is Hugo Niebeling’s 1991 Es wäre gut, daß eiu Mensch würde umbracht für das Volk, a new staging of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Saint John’s Passion in the Cathedral of Speyer—an innovative synthesis of music, acting, and dancing, enhanced by the sacral aura of the architecture.

Works cited Achternbusch, Herbert (1983), Das Gespenst. Filmbuch, Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins. Bulgakov, Mikhail ([1966] 1996), The Master and Margarita, trans. Diana Burgin and Katherine O’Connor, New York: Vintage. Community of Oberammergau (ed.) (2000), The Passion Play 2000, with contributions by Christian Stückl and Otto Huber, München, London, and New York: Prestel. Community of Oberammergau (ed.) (2010), The Passion Play 2010, with contributions by Christian Stückl and Otto Huber, München, London, and New York: Prestel. Dostoevsky, Fyodor ([1880] 2003), The Brothers Karamazov, trans. David McDuff, New York: Penguin. Ebner, Martin (2003), Jesus von Nazareth in seiner Zeit, Sozialgeschichtliche Erkundungen, SBS 196, Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk. Fründt, Bodo (1991), “Mut zum Konflikt mit allen. Gespräch mit dem polnischen Regisseur Andrzej Wajda,” Süddeutsche Zeitung 106 (8/9 May): 14. Hemingway, Ernest (1927), “Today is Friday.” Available online: http://genius.com/Ernesthemingway-today-is-friday-annotated (accessed December 29, 2016). Momos [= Walter Jens] (1972), “Fernsehen: Kein Film für Karfreitag. Pilatus und andere von Andrzej Wajda,” Die Zeit, April 7. Available online: www.zeit.de/1972www. zeit.de/1972/14/kein-film-fuer-karfreitagwww.zeit.de/1972/14/kein-film-fuerkarfreitagwww.zeit.de/1972/14/kein-film-fuer-karfreitag/14/kein-film-fuer-karfreitag (accessed December 11, 2016). Oplustil, Karlheinz (1995), “Review Das Geheimnis,” epd Film, 7 (July): 37–38. Safier, David (2008), Jesus liebt mich, Reinbek: Rowohlt Verlag. Thome, Rudolf (1988), “Il Messia – Der Messias,” in Peter W. Jansen and Wolfram Schütte (eds.), Roberto Rossellini, 261–66, Reihe Film 36, München: Hanser. Wörther, Matthias (2016), “Jesus light? Florian David Fitz’ Filmkomödie, Jesus liebt mich,” in Reinhold Zwick and Peter Hasenberg (eds.), The Bible Revisited. Neue Zugänge im Film, 217–31, Film und Theologie 29, Marburg: Schüren. Zwick, Reinhold (2016), “Der Galiläer (Express-Film, 1921) and I.N.R.I. (Neumann Film, 1923): The Silence of Jesus in the German Cinema,” in David J. Shepherd (ed.), The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927), 211–35, Routledge Studies in Religion and Film 5, New York and London: Routledge.

12

Once Upon a Time in the West . . . The Fate of Religion, the Bible, and the Italian Western James G. Crossley

Introduction That biblical epics politicize constructions of “religion” and the Bible is probably not news to anyone familiar with the academic genre of “the Bible and film.” One of the most famous examples is Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956) with its not-too-subtle anti-Soviet, Cold War propaganda whereby the biblical story becomes representative of liberal democracy (Wright 2002: 89–127). Although coming from a somewhat different perspective, the most famous comedic take on the biblical epic, Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), has the historical figure of Jesus reconstructed through the cipher of Brian and representing an anti-bureaucratic individualism that was tied up, however contradictorily, with the then emerging neoliberal capitalism (Crossley 2016: 129–52). What I want to do here is to look at how emerging neoliberalism became tied up with shifting assumptions about the meaning of religion, Christianity, and the Bible, with reference to a cluster of films affected by the gravitational pull of America and Hollywood: Italian Westerns. These films gained the label “Spaghetti Westerns” because of their association with Cinecittà Studios, Rome, and for having an Italian director. The most famous of these films were directed by Sergio Leone, made a star out of Clint Eastwood, and brought the distinctive soundtracks of Ennio Morricone to a mainstream audience. The grand narrative of Leone’s Dollars Trilogy—A Fistful of Dollars (1964; US release: 1967), For a Few Dollars More (1965; US release: 1967), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966; US release: 1967)—and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968; US release: 1969) has a shift of focus from Clint Eastwood’s bounty-killer character in the Dollars Trilogy to another dangerous figure, Harmonica (Charles Bronson), in Once Upon a Time in the West and then ultimately to Jill McBain (Claudia Cardinale), a nonviolent former prostitute and effectively the “mother” of the new town of Sweetwater.1 This is not the end of Leone’s Western output and of relevance here is his treatment of the Mexican Revolution in Duck, You Sucker! (aka A Fistful of Dynamite 1971). As probably the most influential analyst of Leone, Christopher Frayling (2006), would detail, these Westerns were also a critical commentary on the American Western, transforming the

152

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

optimistic view of the frontier into a world of death and corruption. Once Upon Time in the West, however, would be a deliberate attempt by Leone to replace the Dollars Trilogy with a story of, as Leone himself put it, “a birth and a death . . . a cinematic fresco on the birth of America . . . the end of the Western’s golden age and the demise of the Western as a fable” (quoted in Frayling 2005: 31). I want to show that Leone’s narrative was grounded in the political radicalism of the emerging Italian Western but, as Leone became embedded in American popular culture, these constructions were domesticated and brought more in line with neoliberal assumptions. What I hope to show in turn is a broader point about how film can be a culturally credible carrier of ideological change but with a particular focus on the construction of, and changing assumptions about, the implicit authority of religion, Christianity, and the Bible in political discourse. Put another way, Leone’s Westerns, like Life of Brian, also tell the story of the transformation of the Liberal Bible (/religion/Christianity) into the Neoliberal Bible (religion/Christianity) that was taking place in mainstream political discourse and emerging from the chaos of the social and economic upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s (Crossley 2016).2

The “Moment” of the Italian Western One of the oldest questions (and once among the most popular) in the critical study of Leone’s Westerns is, as Frayling put it, “why did the ‘moment’ of the Italian Westerns appeal so much to children of Marx and Coca-Cola in Europe, especially the generation of May 1968?” (Frayling 2006: xv). The geography should be extended to include North America and the timeframe widened to include its ongoing reception. It has long been noted that Leone’s Westerns can be read as simultaneously celebrating and critiquing capitalism and Hollywood Westerns and that such tensions have always surrounded their various receptions (including Leone’s own understandings). As has also long been noted in such debates, Eastwood’s anti-authority character and distinctive style in the Leone Westerns had a sympathetic audience in the social changes of the 1960s and sartorial statements of associated Vietnam protests. Yet Eastwood’s individualistic gunslinger has little time for bureaucracy and, for all his appeal to the anti-Vietnam Left, the dangerous loner with the ability to take out characters of formidable cruelty is not far removed from other films, which pick up on various Western themes and which represent the next stage in the development of the Eastwood and Bronson personas— and a firm shift to the Right. For instance, Harry (Eastwood) in Dirty Harry (1971) and the vigilante Paul Kersey (Bronson) in Michael Winner’s Death Wish films (1974, 1982, 1985) both function as a reaction against the perceived progressive politics of the 1960s (Fisher 2011: 187–88; McGilligan 2016). There are many ways to try to understand the popularity and survival of Leone’s Westerns. One (and only one) is to look at their ideological fit with changes happening in Europe and North America since the 1960s. The timing of the marketable and popart image of the recognizable Eastwood persona that emerged from the Dollars Trilogy (and which Eastwood was keen to protect) is crucial because the instant image and PR have become a defining feature of neoliberal or postmodern capitalism emerging from



Once Upon a Time in the West . . .

153

the 1960s onward. More broadly, leftist criticisms of traditional forms of authority, alongside a sustained critique of the dominance of Marxist metanarratives, are also significant for understanding the emergence of neoliberalism. Whether intended or not, the rhetoric of freedom, liberty, individuality, and challenges to the role of the state which came out of the 1960s would be appropriated by the Right (most notably in economic terms) and adapted in many parts of popular culture and in the Reaganization or Thatcherization of the media, journalism, universities, economics, and politics (see, e.g., among many, Harvey 2005; Plehwe, Walpen, and Neunhoffer 2007; Fraser 2013). The values associated with Leone’s protagonists are sometimes compatible with, though sometimes critical of, dominant values that have since become associated with neoliberalism. Leone’s amoral, and seemingly unconstrained, entrepreneurial bounty killers are, after all, obsessed with accumulating a personal fortune. But the other pull on Leone was the developing radical left-wing politics of the Italian Westerns of the 1960s (Fisher 2011). Here are ideas about the role of the subaltern, a suspicion of the state monopoly on violence, advocacy of the legitimate use of violence against the state and capitalism, explanations for the rise of fascism, reflections on the nature of revolution, and even the presentation of a multicultural hillbilly commune of outsiders and dispossessed in Face to Face (1967, dir. Sergio Sollima). A range of influences is detectable, in addition to Marxism and anarchism (broadly understood), such as African liberation movements, European and American social upheavals in the 1960s, and the troubling Italian legacy of fascism from the Second World War. In terms of the construction of religion and the Bible in terms of radicalism, the expert (former) gunslinger and now monk, Brother Smith and Wesson (Antonio Casas) is notable. In The Big Gundown (1966, dir. Sergio Sollima), he is an authoritative voice for Corbett (Lee Van Cleef) as he gradually understands the corruption involved in politics and big money north of the Mexican border and how they mistreat the Mexican poor, in this case Cuchillo (Tomas Milian). But the construction of religion, Christianity, and the Bible in terms of radicalism is not simply found in isolated examples. In certain films it appears to be a sustained discourse as two of the most prominent films in the genre illustrate: A Bullet for the General (1966, dir. Damiano Damiani) and Requiescant (1967, dir. Carlo Lizzani). Both films cover similar themes of death, revenge, money, and religion, and both push left-wing revolutionary agendas that advocate the necessity of violence. Given their radical politics, it is worth noting that both have considerably more prominent female roles among the radical fighters than would ever be found in a Leone film. Both films deal with the development of a country but this time Mexico and the ways US involvement and capitalism, as well as the Mexican government and landowners, play their part. The films side firmly with peons and peasants. Against Leone (and certain treatments of Mexico in US Westerns), death (ubiquitous in Italian Westerns) is used to further the revolutionary cause and money is more closely associated with corrupt capitalists and imperialists rather than any virtue or skill as exemplified in Eastwood’s character in the Dollars Trilogy (Mitchell 1996: 237). In both films an element of Christianity is profaned through capitalist or state violence—the crucifixion on the railway line in A Bullet for the General and Ferguson (Mark Damon) perversely identifying himself with the God of the Bible in Requiescant. But in both

154

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

films Christianity is understood as a means to use violence for a revolutionary cause. At the idealistic heart of both films are revolutionary priests, Santo (Klaus Kinski) and Don Juan (Pier Paolo Pasolini). In A Bullet for the General, Santo is the most hardened of revolutionaries, almost blindly loyal to the cause, and believes that stolen weapons are being used for God’s work. He tells a bourgeois priest that Christ sided with the poor and downtrodden and died between two bandits. Therefore, according to Santo, a good priest should be a violent revolutionary. Santo grenades the military in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit (ending with an “Amen”) and, in place of poor prisoners, he puts their captors in a prison cell telling them that they will die slowly and that they can take the time to think about forgiveness of their sins. He too asks for forgiveness for shedding blood but, crucially, accepts violence as a necessity in the interim. Requiescant (Lou Castell), in the film of the same name, follows a familiar path in Italian Westerns of developing political awareness but the Bible itself is on this path. Brought up by a nonviolent preacher, Requiescant embarks on a mission to find his half-sister Princy (Barbara Frey) and the Bible (whether in physical form or in quotation) justifies his actions, accompanies him in his fights, and even protects him from a bullet. But it takes the commentary of Don Juan, beginning when Requiescant’s Bible lands at his feet, to reveal the Bible’s full revolutionary potential. As Don Juan claims, this is the Book that will bring the people freedom. And in sharp contrast to Leone’s characters, Don Juan denounces individualist revenge and enjoyment of violence. Instead, he claims (like Santo in A Bullet for the General) that violence is an unfortunate necessity in the fight for justice and liberty against the Fergusons of this world who will steal their land. The endings of both films make for a sharp contrast with the culmination of Leone’s narrative in Once Upon a Time in the West: rather than the backdrop of the boomtown of Sweetwater, peasants till the land as the backdrop of the freedom fighters riding off to fight for the cause (Requiescant) and Bill Tate (Lou Castell)—the gringo assassin of the revolutionary leader, Elias (Jaime Fernández)—is shot dead and sent on a train back to America, the land deemed to put a price on everything. Traces of political radicalism can be found in Leone’s Westerns. Basic influences can be seen, for instance, in the form of corporate greed found in its most caricatured form in the railroad boss, Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti), in Once Upon a Time in the West. In line with Marxist treatments of the subject in the mid-twentieth century (e.g., Hobsbawm 1969), there is also a relatively sympathetic handling of bandits as symptoms of socioeconomic circumstances. As the bandit Tuco (Eli Wallach) explains to his devout Catholic brother Pablo (Luigi Pistilli) in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, bandit or priest was the only choice for people like them and priest was the easy option. Bandits are also presented as having popular support in small rural towns (e.g., Agua Caliente in For a Few Dollars More). However, the influence of leftist politics is more muted by the time of Once Upon a Time in the West as Leone had become enamored with the romance of the American West before moving on to his jaded presentation of revolution and deconstruction of the Zapata Western in Duck, You Sucker! Nevertheless, revolutionary Christianity is not entirely overturned by Leone by the time of Duck, You Sucker! (1971). John/Sean (James Coburn) returns to Juan



Once Upon a Time in the West . . .

155

(Rod Steiger) the cross that he previously ripped from his neck, as his new life as a new revolutionary general-in-the-making (albeit an accidental and reluctant one) is confirmed, and in place of his previous worship (literally) of the idea of robbing the bank at Mesa Verde. Yet Leone’s Westerns were not radical enough for some. Gian Maria Volonté, who played the roles of Ramón and Indio in Fistful of Dollars and A Few Dollars More, respectively, was a Communist Party member who, despite his prominence in Leone’s Westerns and growing fame, turned down the role of Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in favor of what he saw as more significant political roles (Fisher 2011: 142), like those he was to have in Face to Face and A Bullet for the General. Volonté may have had a point as the political critique is largely muted in Leone’s amoral universe. And when Leone gets to the more cynical Duck, You Sucker! in 1971, the political critique is leveled more at the “intellectual” concept of revolution, Zapata Westerns, and post-1968 disillusionment (Frayling 2000: 305–06). The film does, however, put class distinction in sharp focus, particularly through its presentation of the chaos (and sometimes indiscriminate chaos) of the revolution.

The first stage of capitalist transformation This tension reflects Leone’s own ambiguities and ambivalences concerning socialism. Leone would come to describe himself as a “disillusioned socialist” who was worried that “consciousness-raising films” were too parochial. He believed that it was his task to embrace a mass audience without entirely disengaging political issues. Indeed, Leone felt the tensions between his socialist, anti-fascist upbringing and dreams of wealth distribution, on the one hand, and the incompatibility of owning a villa and being a communist, on the other (Frayling 2000: 305–06). With this in mind, it is notable that the revolutionary thinking in Leone’s Westerns has a similar fate to prominent strands of Western intellectual Marxism in that the revolution is shifted into an analysis of the past, present, or abstract futures rather than a clamor for a socialist transformation of the present or near future. Thus Leone turns the revolutionary fervor of the Italian Western into a materialist explanation of the origins of American capitalism. There are effectively two transformative stages of capitalism in Leone’s Westerns, which resonated with the tensions leading to the emergence of neoliberalism.3 The Dollars Trilogy represents the first transformative stage of capitalism where death and chaos rule—particularly through the deceitful, untrustworthy, morbidly entrepreneurial masters of the new technologies (the numerous elaborate rifles, Ramón’s Gatling in Fistful of Dollars, and the indiscriminate cannons in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) (Campbell 2010). This means wiping out the old socioeconomic order, such as the lingering feudalism of the Rojos and Baxters in A Fistful of Dollars and the outdated peasantry and peasant technology at the beginning of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (against the backdrop of the boy endlessly circling a well on a mule), which is overpowered by the solitary killer and his gun. Unlike the two opposing families in A Fistful of Dollars, Joe can move freely across the boundaries and sell his services to both sides. For Timothy Campbell this means that Joe “comes to stand in for a technological form linked to that mode of postmodern capitalism in which

156

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

circulation of bodies, objects, and labor power is key” (2010: 8). Once the macabre market has dried up, Joe moves on to make more money from death elsewhere in a world increasingly suited to his talents. As the beginning of For a Few Dollars More explains to the audience, the reason for the bounty killers is that life may not have value but death did sometimes have a price. With Leone, the themes of liberty and freedom of Italian Westerns are less about revolutionary politics and more about amorality and the ability of gunslingers like Eastwood’s characters to make money and do as they please. The appealing disregard for traditional authority by the main characters is a marked feature of Leone’s first transformative stage of capitalism represented by the Dollars Trilogy. State government and local authority are not only corrupt or outdated but are constantly undermined, used, or humiliated by a form of individualism represented by Leone’s main characters. In this stage, the corrupt sheriff is no longer loyal, courageous, and especially honest, as Manco points out in For a Few Dollars More. With no other authority than his own, Manco can remove the sheriff ’s badge and toss it away without fear of being arrested or jailed. Going beyond corruption, some traditional authorities are sinister and gruesome. The Northern prison camp is being used by Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef) to carry out torture in his pursuit of Carson’s gold. Indeed, the bigger the authority the more destructive and the more indifferent to suffering it can be. In The Good, the Bad and the Ugly both sides in the Civil War are presented as wasting life on such a mass scale that it even provokes a response of near disgust from a killer like Blondie. Money and the unleashing of death (a common trope across Italian Westerns) are two of the prominent themes that mark this period of Leone’s capitalism and its key social values (Crossley 2017). But a third ever-present backdrop (also common in Italian Westerns), which illuminates this first transformative stage of capitalism, is Christianity (and/or the Bible). Anyone coming to Leone’s Westerns with familiarity with American Westerns will notice Leone’s representation of Christianity is almost always Catholic and Latin rather than Protestant and white. As has long been noted, however, this representation is typically a profaned version of Christianity in the period of Leone’s historical schema where death knows no boundaries. The normative family structure for Leone is presented in terms of the Holy Family (particularly in A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More) and is either uprooted or its members murdered. Throughout the films, desacralized Christian imagery is clear enough in rowdy Last Supper scenes, broken statues, disused and ramshackle crosses often marking death, crumbling churches, churches as bandit hideouts, and ominous church bells. Main characters are presented in similarly ironic ways. Indio provides a parable from the pulpit explaining how the bank of El Paso might not be impenetrable after all, the bounty killer, Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef), is first introduced dressed as a priest reading the Bible, Blondie is labeled (by the vicious Angel Eyes) a golden-haired angel just before he dupes Tuco, and Blondie and Harmonica both take on the role of “Judas,” which is as much a compliment as an insult in a world where betrayal and trickery in pursuit of money are the closest things to virtues (Frayling 2006: xiv; 169). In this profaned world, resurrection plays a transformative role (Frayling 2006: 198–99) for at least three of Leone’s main characters (Joe, Blondie, and Harmonica), which leads to the ultimate deaths and to the ultimate prize. In A Fistful of Dollars, for instance,



Once Upon a Time in the West . . .

157

Joe escapes in the coffin, complete with a shut lid and a few seconds of black screen, followed by his “resurrection” in (of course) a cave. The returned Joe seems dramatically immortal thanks to the trickery of his protective metal vest. But this profanation of Christianity as grotesque, macabre, macho, and something integral to the pursuit of money and transformation of the world of the American Western is part of a world that also gets transformed in Leone’s schema to hasten the development of modern American capitalism, as is evident in the next stage of capitalist transformation.

The second stage of capitalist transformation Once Upon a Time in the West continues Leone’s critical engagement with the American Western but here he incorporates his Dollars Trilogy into a larger narrative and as part of the second transformative stage of capitalism in Leone’s implied schema. At this point in Leone’s story, the age of the gunslinger is coming to an end, as they die off or, in the case of Harmonica, leave the boomtown, as Leone pointed out and as Frayling has documented in detail (2006: 192–216). By the end, it is Jill McBain, the mother of Sweetwater, who now represents the American future. The gunslingers had their uses in protecting Jill McBain from the remaining ravages of the first transformative stage of capitalism but it is the investment in building materials for a strategically located town that guarantees its long-term future. This second transformative stage of capitalism in Once Upon a Time in the West involves the shift to a different form of capitalism. In sharp contrast to the Dollars Trilogy, financial gain is not a primary motivation for the gunslingers in Once Upon a Time in the West. By the end of the film, the successful use of money becomes associated with investment and the emerging business class. Death is also controlled and regulated once the wiping out of the old world and its values is complete. Harmonica and Cheyenne (Jason Robards) defend and aid Jill McBain in her development of Sweetwater before their departure from the historical stage. The development of the railroad (a staple of the American Western) picks up on conventional Western themes but with a Leone spin. This new technological advance brings death (Campbell 2010), whether troops and criminals in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, bounty killers in For a Few Dollars More, or Frank (Henry Fonda) and his gang of killers in Once Upon a Time in the West. But once the railroad is in place and the McBains have taken control of water and labor, the development of the railroad becomes domesticated in the next stage of capitalism as the old killers are all removed. Already in Once Upon a Time in the West, the trains bring or will bring commerce, Jill McBain, and different ethnic groups, including Native Americans who are conspicuous by their absence in Leone’s previous Westerns. As Leone himself suggested (Frayling 2005: 31), this harnessing of a more ethnically diverse community—and labor force—is part of the construction of new boundaries and new towns in this stage of capitalist development. A re-sacralized Christianity is also found in Once Upon a Time in the West, especially in the plans of Brett McBain (Frank Wolff) for a church within the town. The profaned Christian imagery of the era of the bounty killer and gunslinger accompanies Harmonica, Cheyenne, and Frank, but by the time Jill McBain secures the train station

158

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

and guarantees the future of Sweetwater at the end of the film, the murdering angels, resurrected killers, and trickster Judases are dead, long gone, or in the process of leaving town. Gone too are the decaying statues and crooked crosses. The construction of a de-sacralized religion is associated closely with bygone eras, either in its decline or as a time when, as Tuco pointed out to his brother amid the crumbling statues in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, banditry was a near inevitability. But in Once Upon a Time in the West, religion is controlled and put in its place, though now it is not obviously Catholic. At a push, it might be argued that lingering Catholic imagery is presented through Jill McBain, picking up on the holy mother and whore tropes (both of which have been associated with the two most famous Marys of the New Testament and in some aspects of Catholic traditions)—and Leone clearly had interest in Holy Family imagery. Yet the Sweetwater at the end could be a Protestant town from the Hollywood mainstream rather than a distinctly Leone one. But whatever its denomination, the church is now domesticated and, as Harmonica and Cheyenne discovered, put in its place alongside the post office, corral, and water tank in Brett McBain’s plans for the building of the town. This is a town of private enterprise and Christianity is very much constructed as part of this development. Culmination of a Marxian reading of history though it may be, Once Upon a Time in the West still ends optimistically and is hardly the overt condemnation of American capitalism found in other Italian Westerns. The Dollars Trilogy may well have turned the world of the American Western upside down, they may have linked capital with the forces of death, and they may have challenged traditional forms of authority and community in a way appealing to 1960s counterculture, but Leone’s second transformative stage of capitalism showcases the values of amoral capitalism, untrustworthiness, and a certain form of individualism, which are hardly alien to emerging neoliberalism. It is also perhaps significant that the optimistic and heavily edited Once Upon a Time in the West was not the immediate success that the Dollars Trilogy was and it was not until Vietnam was comfortably in the past and Reaganism was firmly in the ascendency that its reputation as a cinematic classic began to develop with an extended version released in 1984. And by the time the Westerns of Leone and Italian cinema were being showcased through relentless borrowing (just as Leone himself had done) from the 1990s onward, the radical leftist element of religion and violence was largely drained and Leone’s love of playfulness and pastiche foregrounded (Fisher 2011: 193–201). Nevertheless, the radical impulse was not fully suppressed and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained (2012) arguably intensifies critique of a racist heritage. And this radical-conformist tension is also present in another prominent reception of Leone in the Back to the Future trilogy. Eastwood’s ambiguous character ends up both being adored by gangstercapitalist Biff Tannen in Back to the Future Part II (1989) and his identity assumed (complete with poncho) by the hero Marty McFly when he goes back in time to the Wild West and fights the earlier Tannen line in Back to the Future Part III (1990). And, notably, it is Joe’s final fight with Ramón in A Fistful of Dollars that is either replayed (Tannen) or mimicked (McFly). Is this not a radical anti-capitalist reclamation of the Italian Western? Probably not. Instead, this is a typical move in mainstream postmodern cinema and neoliberalism



Once Upon a Time in the West . . .

159

more generally, which has managed to absorb seemingly radical critique (Fisher 2009; Cremin 2011). As Slavoj Žižek put it: Today, when everyone is “anticapitalist,” up to the Hollywood “socio-critical” conspiracy movies (from The Enemy of the State to The Insider) in which the enemy are the big corporations with their ruthless pursuit of profit, the signifier “anticapitalism” has lost its subversive sting. What one should problematize is rather the self-evident opposite of this “anticapitalism”: the trust in the democratic substance of the honest Americans to break up the conspiracy. (Žižek n.d.)

This is an argument developed elsewhere in Žižek’s film criticism, notably in his review of Avatar (2009) for the New Statesman. Žižek pointed out that at the same time as Avatar was generating one billion dollars in under three weeks, something resembling its plot was happening in the Indian state of Orissa. Land was sold to mining companies, which provoked an armed rebellion, to which the state responded with force and propaganda. Žižek added: So where is Cameron’s film here? Nowhere: in Orissa, there are no noble princesses waiting for white heroes to seduce them and help their people, just the Maoists organising the starving farmers. The film enables us to practise a typical ideological division: sympathising with the idealised aborigines while rejecting their actual struggle. The same people who enjoy the film and admire its aboriginal rebels would in all probability turn away in horror from the Naxalites, dismissing them as murderous terrorists. The true avatar is thus Avatar itself—the film substituting for reality. (Žižek 2010)

Likewise, the traces of the radicalism of the Italian Western in Hollywood are in Hollywood for a reason and it is not to further the Marxist or anarchist cause nor is it a rallying cry for revolutionary priests. As Mark Fisher concluded in his analysis of Wall-E (2008), such films perform our anti-capitalism and radicalism for us, allowing us to consume with impunity (Fisher 2009: 12). By way of curious comparison, the fate of radical Christianity of the Italian Westerns (minus the revolutionary violence in the present) may be found in major books on the historical Jesus, with their similar agrarian contexts, radical religious leaders, revolutionary hopes, subversion, and tales of banditry. Nevertheless, these Jesuses do not evoke anything like Latin American liberation theology, and a John Dominic Crossan, N. T. Wright, or Marcus Borg will instead sell lots of books to their respective church audiences in the United States, allowing consumption of radicalism but with anti-capitalist fantasies safely displaced to the long, distant past (Crossley 2015: 5–9; Myles 2016).

Concluding remarks The fate of the Italian Westerns, particularly those of Sergio Leone, provides an insight into the kinds of ideological influences on the constructions of religion, Christianity,

160

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

and the Bible in European and North American political discourses. This is not necessarily the fate of all such constructions in film, politics, or culture, of course, but this account does nevertheless tell what is becoming a familiar tale. As with Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), what started out in the context of provocative political thought could be co-opted by neoliberal capitalism. As with Life of Brian, Leone’s Westerns had—and have—subcultural capital, which made them both effective carriers of ideological change and, as such, a part of the ongoing transformation of the Liberal Bible (/religion/Christianity) into the Neoliberal Bible (/religion/Christianity). The radicalism of the Italian Westerns did not disappear but was absorbed and domesticated, as shown by their later receptions. But what happens next in the story could be something different. Since the financial crash of 2008, the neoliberal settlement has been challenged like never before and ideological hegemony is still up for grabs. Political radicalism has returned to the mainstream and—who knows?— perhaps the radical priests of the 1960s West might return too in some form. Then again, the gangster-capitalist Biff Tannen was also a fan of the Leone Westerns so it may be in the critique of authoritarianism and fascism where echoes of the radical Italian are to be heard.

Notes 1 Eastwood’s bounty-killer character is popularly called The Man with No Name, though he is only known by others in the films as Joe (A Fistful of Dollars), Manco (For a Few Dollars More), and Blondie (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly). I will refer to the names of the characters as stated in each film. 2 By Liberal Bible (/religion/Christianity) I mean the modern construction of the Bible as equated with freedom, democracy, tolerance, rights, rule of law, and so forth. By Neoliberal Bible (/religion/Christianity), I mean the construction of the Bible (/religion/Christianity) in line with neoliberal economics, for example, an emphasis on the private sector over the public, charity over state welfare, anti-trade unions, individual responsibility for success or failure, deregulation, importance of image, and so forth. For discussion see Sherwood (2006 and 2011), Crossley (2016). 3 Different typologies for the world of the Italian Western have been given and those of Frayling (2006) and Fisher (2011) complement mine.

Works cited Campbell, Timothy (2010), “The Corrupting Sea, Technology and Devalued Life in Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns,” California Italian Studies, 1 (1): 1–15. Cremin, Colin (2011), Capitalism’s New Clothes: Enterprise, Ethics and Enjoyment in Times of Crisis, London: Pluto. Crossley, James G. (2015), Jesus and the Chaos of History: Redirecting the Quest for the Historical Jesus, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crossley, James G. (2016), Harnessing Chaos: The Bible in English Political Discourse since 1968, rev. ed., London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark.



Once Upon a Time in the West . . .

161

Crossley, James G. (2017), “‘Death, Sometimes, Has Its Price’: How Douglas Davies and Sergio Leone Cope with Capitalism and Change,” in Mathew Guest and Martha Middlemiss Lé Mon (eds.), Death, Life and Laughter: Essays on Religion in Honour of Douglas Davies, 35–50, Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Fisher, Mark (2009), Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Winchester, UK, and Washington, USA: Zero. Fisher, Austin (2011), Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western: Politics, Violence and Popular Italian Cinema, London and New York: I. B. Tauris. Fraser, Nancy (2013), Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis, London: Verso. Frayling, Christopher (2000), Sergio Leone: Something to Do with Death, London: Faber and Faber. Frayling, Christopher (2005), Sergio Leone: Once Upon a Time in Italy, London: Thames and Hudson. Frayling, Christopher (2006), Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone, 3rd ed., London and New York: I. B. Taurus. Harvey, David (2005), A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hobsbawm, Eric J. (1969), Bandits, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. McGilligan, Patrick (2016), “Dirty Harry Lives,” Jacobin. Available online: https://www. jacobinmag.com/2016/04/clint-eastwood-dirty-harry-police-brutality-racism/ (accessed January 24, 2017). Mitchell, Lee Clark (1996), Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Myles, Robert J. (2016), “The Fetish for a Subversive Jesus,” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 14 (1): 52–70. Plehwe, Dieter, Bernhard J. A. Walpen, and Gisela Neunhoffer, eds. (2007), Neoliberal Hegemony: A Global Critique, London: Routledge. Sherwood, Yvonne (2006), “Bush’s Bible as a Liberal Bible (Strange though that Might Seem),” Postscripts, 2 (1): 47–58. Sherwood, Yvonne (2011), “On the Genesis between the Bible and Rights,” in Matthew J. M. Coomber (ed.), Bible and Justice: Ancient Texts, Modern Challenges, 13–42, London and Oakville: Equinox. Wright, Melanie (2002), Moses in America: The Cultural Uses of Biblical Narrative, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Žižek, Slavoj (n.d.), “Do We Still Live in a World?” Lacan.com. Available online: http:// www.lacan.com/zizrattlesnakeshake.html (accessed January 24, 2017). Žižek, Slavoj (2010), “Return of the Natives,” New Statesman, March 4. Available online: http://www.newstatesman.com/film/2010/03/avatar-reality-love-couple-sex (accessed January 24, 2017).

162

Part Two

Theories

164

13

A Return to Form: Bible, Film Theory, and Film Analysis Laura Copier

An exegesis of theory In his chapter called “On the History of Film Theory,” David Rodowick paints the hazy picture of film theory in contemporary academia. Competing and complex perspectives potentially distract and confuse its practitioners. There is not even clarity and agreement on the object that theory is meant to elucidate: film itself. In the digital age, “ontological anchors of film have become ungrounded,” which has implications for the ways in which cinema studies approaches itself and its object of study. Rodowick speaks of the “metatheoretical attitude” and the “reflexive attitude” in film studies, where the dominant interest seems to be in “excavating its own history and in reflexively examining what film theory is or has been” (2014: 66). In Elegy for Theory, Rodowick dismantles the notion that there is a coherent “story of film theory,” while at the same time struggling to make sense of the historical genesis of film, theory, and film theory within the larger landscape of aesthetic theory, criticism, and academia, especially the humanities. Despite the fact that Rodowick’s book at times brings up a dizzying amount of matters regarding the “conceptual vicissitudes” of theory, especially for those who are uninitiated or lack specific training in this field, the bottom line is clear: there is “no single text or restricted corpus [that] can represent the highly elaborate cross-disciplinary space that defines Theory in the Humanities today” (2014: 201). Perhaps then, Rodowick concedes, one should zoom out and circumvent the problem of theory from a “larger and less detailed view” (2014: 201). An example of this long view is Richard Rushton and Gary Bettinson’s introduction to What Is Film Theory? (The title is an obvious allusion to Bazin’s 1967 What Is Cinema?) By combining Rodowick’s as well as Rushton and Bettinson’s outline of the history of film theory, a more concise picture emerges. The latter’s basic premise is unambiguous: “There is no single, monolithic ‘film theory’ that film scholars unanimously endorse” (2010: 1). This lack of a “master theory,” Rushton and Bettinson continue, “is not to the detriment of film theory,” rather, it signals that writing and thinking about film and film theory can take myriad shapes and forms, all of which give testimony to the “cinema’s significance for our cultural lives” (2010: 1–2). Or, as Rodowick says,

166

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

“Theory is a vista composed of many layers, and our view of it is oriented by many competing frames. Obtaining a clearer picture of theory means neither choosing a different perspective, but rather remaining open to the complexity of its past and present movements” (2014: 66). In their historical overview, Rushton and Bettinson skip the early stages of writing on film and choose the 1960s as the starting point for contemporary film theory.1 Film studies took hold in academia at that time, often through its adoption by literature and philosophy programs. Rushton and Bettinson place this development in a larger context—for instance, in the “unparalleled wave of cinephilia” of a new generation of moviegoers, inspired by the New Hollywood cinema of the late 1960s and early 1970s. More importantly though, film studies was seeking to legitimize itself, namely, by “importing theories from linguistics, cultural theory and psychoanalysis” (Rushton and Bettinson 2010: 3–4). The affiliation with literary studies is most clearly expressed in the urge to create canons of great cinematic artists, resulting in the advent of auteur theory, spearheaded by the work of Andrew Sarris, as the dominant paradigm for studying film in a university context. The study and veneration of the auteur alongside the incorporation of feminism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, and semiotics continued to be the leading schools of thought into the early 1980s. Rodowick summarizes this period as one where “one still believed in the possibility of Theory as a more or less coherent discursive field that drew on disparate conceptual elements and discourses but was nonetheless unifiable across the broad problematic of ideology and the subject” (2014: 202). Up to this moment in the genealogy of theory, the schools and movements were relatively distinct from one another. Moreover, the shifts and changes within the field took place slowly. This all changed dramatically in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the list of schools and movements became ever expanding: including formalism, myth criticism, Marxist criticism, psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, structuralism and semiotics, reader-response criticism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, feminism, queer theory, critical race theory, postcolonial theory, new historicism, cultural studies, and media studies. Thereafter, film theory is a “disaggregated and rhizomatic proliferation of fields and problems” (Rodowick 2014: 201–02). If this list is not imposing enough, the subfields springing from a particular movement—for example, cultural studies—constitute yet another list: body studies, whiteness studies, indigenous studies, porn studies, performance studies, trauma studies, and so forth. This may lead one to conclude that film studies suffers from “trendy theory”: the thrill of the new and the ever-decreasing expiration date of theoretical frameworks.2 According to Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener, one way to make sense of the multitude of film theories is to focus on two interlocking questions that motivate all theoretical approaches developed throughout the last century (starting from the 1920s on): “How do films work on spectators and how do spectators work on film?” (2010: 167). So, rather than focusing on schools and movements, the question of the relationship between cinema and spectator takes precedence. Like Elsaesser and Hagener, Warren Buckland treats theories as a series of answers to a set of problems: “Any serious discussion of a theory must therefore analyze the problem the theory is addressing, for it is the problem that initiates inquiry and by



A Return to Form: Bible, Film Theory, and Film Analysis

167

which the theory should be held accountable.” Furthermore, it is important to realize that problems are not always explicitly formulated as questions and often have to be reconstructed from “a series of background assumptions—antecedent knowledge and presuppositions. The presuppositions constitute the given premises that define the problem as a problem” (2012: 7). Biblical scholars engaging with film might profit from considering exactly what questions drive their work, what problem they presuppose. If the problem remains opaque, the way to approach it theoretically and analytically will likewise remain unclear.

Reading for the plot The problem formulated by those who engage with Bible and film seems predominantly focused on the question of biblical fidelity in film. Even though some biblical scholars recognize this obsession, they still seem unable to transcend, sidestep, or discard it altogether. Thus, in the general introduction to The Bible in Motion, Rhonda BurnetteBletsch rightly posits that even “an overtly biblical film should not be evaluated based on its so-called ‘fidelity’ to source material” and claims one should see films instead as “interpretations” in their own right (2016: 2). Nonetheless, the Bible still takes priority because film is conceptualized as part of the Bible’s reception history.3 As I have argued elsewhere, all art is inevitably engaged with what came before it, but such engagement is an active reworking (see Copier 2012: 9–47). The traditional view regards ancient art as the source, a foundational influence on everything that follows in its wake. This conception of the relationship between source and adaptation leads to questions of sources and fidelity. However, it is necessary to escape the past’s (what came first) dominating influence over the present (what came later, or after). The past should not be understood as a coherent point of departure or origin, against which all later forms should be evaluated. Instead, one should see past and present in a dialogue, which transforms both. Burnette-Bletsch recognizes the importance of such dialogue, when she emphasizes the need to treat the Bible (that which came first) and film (that which can only be regarded as a reworking of some kind of that which came first) as “equal partners in a conversation” and the need to allow films to “speak with their own voice” (2016: 3), but the notion of “reception” still enshrines the authority of the past (the Bible). Furthermore, the very notion of dialogue privileges the textual (the Bible) and glosses over film’s explicitly visual nature.4 Further, if language is the facilitating factor in the Bible and film relationship, it comes as no surprise that narrative is most often the analytical focal point. Film becomes subservient to textual content. The textual focus reduces film to a vehicle, a vessel, or even a shell, which contains the text, a narrative replete with meaning. This distinction between form (film) and content (Bible) is not only very problematic for actual film analysis, but also severely limits the theoretical discussion of the analysis of film and Bible in a larger context. Despite these shortcomings, the main object of analysis in Bible and film scholarship still remains (biblical) narrative.5 John Lyden’s The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film is instructive here. After setting up a range of different approaches to religion and film, Lyden devotes his volume’s final section to a number of topics drawn from religious studies that seem

168

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

to be relevant to the study of film: “They suggest a dialogue between religious and filmic understanding of these concepts, which provides opportunities for uncovering similarities and differences between them” (Lyden 2009: 7). The first concept is, of course, narrative, and Roy Anker’s essay on that topic evaluates various narrative forms, for instance parabolic narratives and mythological fables, in terms of their ability to engage the transcendent. Anker claims that as a medium whose hallmark achievement is the replication of what at least seems objectively real, film might be ill-suited to convey religious or spiritual reality, which eludes adequate expression of objectification. (2009: 333)

Again, narrative (and its ability to represent transcendence) takes precedence, and Anker zooms in on the different narrative structures available to filmmakers to “display some sort and measure of divine reality” (2009: 334). The generic categories of stories Anker proceeds to outline (holy history, mundane realism, and minimalist realism) are grounded in a conception of “realism” and “cinematic realism” that are barely defined. Anker’s subsequent delineation of four more emblematic narrative structures (parabolic, fable, meditative, and mosaic) is much more useful despite the fact that Anker still places an inordinate amount of value on the presence of the auteur as the ultimate giver of meaning.6 Similar to Burnette-Bletsch, Anker’s conclusion repeats and reinforces the metaphor of the film vessel carrying its precious religious meaning: “A multitude of narrative modes thrive and proliferate, and many of these have proven amply capable of carrying remarkable religious freight” (2009: 338). So, encounters between religion and film are often characterized by a lack of engagement with the film text beyond the level of narrative. Film is described as vessel, but any specifics of what that vessel might actually look like, its possible shape and form, are absent. Put differently, in the quest for finding meaning, the material, technological, and most importantly visual specifics of the medium of film as an art form are ignored. Melanie Wright was one of the first biblical scholars who pointed out this “tendency to elide film meaning into narrative” (Wright 2007: 438). In Religion and Film: An Introduction, Wright is deeply critical of the so-called dialogue between film and religion in a wider sense, which leads her to question the actual interaction between the two. She wonders, “Could it be that—despite the growing bibliography and plethora of courses—film is not really being studied at all?” (2006: 22, Wright’s emphasis). Rather, the focus in these biblical endeavors into film is firmly on the aspect of narrative, and as such is particularly interested in uncovering certain biblical themes and motifs in cinema. More than a decade after Wright posed this rhetorical question, the analysis of film proper still seems undervalued in this field. In the remainder of this chapter, I will propose a way out of this unbalanced relationship.

Formalism and poetics Roger Ebert succinctly observes, “It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it.” To address the “how question,” it is necessary to resort again to film theory. A common



A Return to Form: Bible, Film Theory, and Film Analysis

169

and influential distinction therein has been that between realism and formalism. Realist theories “emphasize film’s ability to offer a hitherto unattainable view onto (non-mediated) reality” (Elsaesser and Hagener 2010: 3).7 Roy Anker’s essay is a good example of this realist school of thinking, which owes much to Siegfried Kracauer and André Bazin. Realists make much of film’s capacity to offer witness, inherent in the medium’s power to record an ontological real. Formalist theories focus instead on film’s construction and composition. The theories under this banner include semiology, structuralism, poststructuralism, and cognitivism. These theories are particularly interested in “how it works,” resulting in analyses of editing, sound, and cinematography. A formalist works to deconstruct the constructed image, “taking apart its various component parts with its self-defined tools, which often appeal to the reader’s common sense” (Colman 2014: 26). The formalist understanding does not deny that film is many things: an art form, a commercial vehicle, a new reality, but more than anything the formalist sees film as a “constructed and heavily coded medium” (Colman 2014: 28). The notion of film form is of crucial importance: if one wants to engage with film, analyze it, interpret it, some, however rudimentary, grasp of aesthetic form is indispensable. In the formalist view, form is not the opposite of content. Consequently, film is not a jug holding meaning, the latter being on the inside of the former. Rather, in the perception of form as the system, there is no inside or outside. Perhaps it comes as no surprise that I am on the side of the formalists. Attention to form means that Bible and film scholars must be attentive not only to theoretical work, but also to particular analytical skills crucial to film studies. Biblical scholars who disregard film form are ultimately only doing half of the interdisciplinary work and this is perhaps why, conversely, most film scholars are not very much interested in the work done in the field of religion and film.8 David Bordwell is perhaps the most widely read pragmatic formalist in film studies today. His work promotes a rigorous construction of film form with a predominantly cognitivist mindset. His influential essay, “Historical Poetics of Cinema,” (1989) might be instructive in examining not only what religion scholars tend to look for in film, but also what they should be looking for, and looking at, in more detail. Rather than positioning himself as belonging to a theoretical school, he defines himself explicitly as not belonging to any kind of methodological or interpretive school or system. The 1989 article (later turned into a full-length monograph by the same title) is his first exploration of what he calls “middle-level research,” which is problem and question centered. This research goes against what Bordwell pejoratively labels “Grand Theory or SLAB theory,” which predominantly consists of Saussurian semiotics, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Althusserian Marxism, and Barthesian textual theory (hence the acronym).9 Scholars adhering to one or several strands of Grand Theory advocate the notion that “they possess a general theory of social and psychic life which can subsume cinematic phenomena under broader laws” (Bordwell 1989: 385). One of Bordwell’s major issues with Grand Theory is how it uses, or rather, abuses film: “The writer starts with a doctrinal abstraction and draws on cinematic phenomena as illustrative examples” (Bordwell 1989: 387, Bordwell’s emphasis). Theory is the main focus, and the film under consideration is subservient to theory. Grand Theory takes precedent

170

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

over film form in this type of film scholarship in the way the Bible takes precedent over film in many Bible and film studies. Bordwell’s historical poetics is an addition to the study of poetics by Aristotle, Stravinsky, and Todorov. By adding the concept of “historical” to his conception of poetics, Bordwell puts more emphasis on the historical context, and on the causal changes in style and form. The central object of historical poetics is “films’ constructional principles and effects” (Bordwell 1989: 371). In order to gauge what biblical scholars might gain from taking a more formalist approach to film, it is necessary to emphasize that they may already be following and applying at least some of the central tenets of poetics. Traditional poetics, Bordwell argues, consists of three interrelated domains of study: the study of thematics, the study of constructional form, and the study of stylistics. Biblical scholars are adept at analyzing the relation between Bible and film from the perspective of thematics: the search for and study of themes, motifs, tropes, and myths. This approach requires skills closest to their own disciplinary strengths. As such, the thematic approach is most prominently displayed in Bible and film encounters. Things become more problematic when Bordwell discusses the idea of thematics as “components of the constructive process.” Often, he claims, thematic studies are unconcerned with the components. Rather, the film is “ransacked for discrete items of ‘content’, which are then used to answer certain questions about .  .  . cultural values” (Bordwell 1989: 375). The notion of constructional form inquires into the “architectonic principles” that shape a film. For Bordwell, the architecture of a film is chiefly constructed by narrative, the dominant compositional principle present in mainstream, that is, Hollywood film genres. Anker’s essay also highlights the importance of narrative as a possible interdisciplinary intermediary in Bible and film, but Bordwell’s work adds a theoretical and analytical precision, which can be instructive for biblical scholars (see Bordwell 1985). While more can be learned specifically about film composition, biblical scholars are quite familiar with narrative. It is the final tenet of poetics, process, or rather, stylistics that seems to be lacking in much of Bible and film scholarship. The domain of stylistics looks at film form in the most detail. It analyzes the actual components patterning the film medium. In his work of the last thirty-five years, Bordwell argues that the overall narrative structure (composition) of a Hollywood film consists of a fairly stable set of formal conventions and norms. One can study these formal aspects from a historical point of view and conclude that the dominant narrative structure and its related techniques of cinematography and editing have by and large been stable since the days of Classical Hollywood.10 The question is what biblical scholars, in contrast to film historians or film aesthetes, might gain from this approach to film. If one is interested in religious themes, meaning, even possible expressions of the holy and the sacred in film, why study the nuts and bolts of cinematography, editing, or a discrete aspect of narrative form such as point of view? The intangibility and abstractness of transcendental topics might seem to make it impossible to identify them at the formal level of film style. Within current film theory, however, there is a heated discussion bringing to the forefront the role and importance of film form in the analysis of the concept of affect.



A Return to Form: Bible, Film Theory, and Film Analysis

171

In her 2014 monograph The Forms of the Affects, Eugenie Brinkema sets out to intervene in film studies’ ongoing turn to affect, a concept that in its “formlessfeeling/what-is-not-structure thus has become a general term for any resistance to systematicity” (2014: 30). Her argument rests on the observation that film and media theorists working on affect theory are united in the shared suspicion that since the 1970s film theory “has led the discipline astray by omitting a serious consideration of sensation, embodiment, and materiality.” By taking this stance, Brinkema argues, something got lost by the wayside. The notion of the affective, “immediate seductive feeling” (2014: 30), was crafted at the expense of the formal. In response, Brinkema signals a “return to form in the Humanities,” which was spurned by a “growing sense of frustration and disenchantment . . . with textual digest . . . and a lack of interest in formal processes” (2014: 39). Brinkema’s objective is twofold. On one hand, she advocates for reading affects as having forms, which aims to make a theoretical intervention in the affect debate. On the other, she stresses the importance of reading for form as a methodological strategy. It is in the latter objective, I would argue, that religion and film scholars can find useful guidance. Like Bordwell, Brinkema instructs the analyst to focus a slow, deep attention to both the usual suspects of close analysis that are so often ignored or reduced to paraphrase in recent work on affect—montage, camera movement, mise-en-scène, color, sound—and to more ephemeral problematics such as duration, rhythm, absences, elisions, ruptures, gaps, and point of contradiction (ideological, aesthetic, structural, and formal). (2014: 37)

In conclusion, scholars of Bible and film stand to gain a lot from a sustained interest in poetics and the formal. As Brinkema argues, though, attentiveness to the formal is not easy and it is often the “long way round” in that it may lead to “restless detours” and strange delays” when analyzing a film. If one engages with a film on a formal level, there is always the possibility that one is delayed by the “many questions posed by the textual form itself ” (2014: 36). Nevertheless, this metaphor of the unexpected journey carries with it the possibility of discovering new, unexpected directions too. For any lasting and meaningful engagement between Bible and film, attentiveness and a willingness to linger over the questions and obstacles posed by the form of film itself are indispensable.

Notes 1 See Rodowick (2014) for a discussion of the importance of early theorists, such as Munsterberg, Arnheim, Kracauer, Panofsky, and Balázs. See Stam (2000) for a comprehensive overview of the history of film theory. 2 Embracing this novelty, John Lyden states that the field of religion and film is “a dynamic and exciting discipline that touches on multiple topics of interest to anyone who wants to understand religion or popular culture or their intersection” (2009: 1–2). The various approaches in this book, such as affect theory (Seesengood),

172

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Deleuzian theory (Aichlele), queer theory (Twomey), and postcolonial theory (Pyper), underline the futility of broad categorization in film theory. 3 Of course, Burnette-Bletsch can hardly present the issue otherwise as her collection is part of a series of handbooks on biblical reception. 4 Raymond Bellour argues that the written analysis of film is “the product of a double transgression,” as the analyst must use words to describe a moving image. Unlike a literary text, the text of the film is unquotable; it is beyond the film analyst’s reach. The literary analyst and the biblical scholar do not encounter this problem. As Bellour’s own work demonstrates, the written analysis of film can be excruciatingly detailed; however, “the written text can never capture anything but a kind of elementary skeleton.” Bellour’s ruminations on the stumbling blocks encountered when one tries to come to terms with this technological medium debunk the idea that film analysis is straightforward (Bellour 2000: 16–7). 5 This problem is inherent in the tendency to read film for plot, character, setting or as a narrative. It is also inherent in mythological criticism, if “myth” is seen as some kind of universal narrative structure. In the 1970s, film studies also appropriated Lévi-Strauss’s work on binary oppositions in culture. David Bordwell and Noël Carroll (1996: 5–6) call this “cine-structuralism,” a tendency to analyze narrative in terms of recurring binary pairs. 6 For an extended reading of the parabolic in film, see Matthew Rindge (2016). For a Deleuzian reading of mosaic narrative structure, see Patricia Pisters (2011). 7 See, by contrast, Paul Schrader’s Trancendental Style in Film (1972), an important early work on film form’s ability to suggest the transcendent. 8 For example, Joel Martin remarks that there is “an assumption that film studies has little to learn from religious studies” (1995: 2). 9 The attack against SLAB theory is continued with fervor in Bordwell and Carroll (1996). 10 Bordwell’s The Way Hollywood Tells It is a study of the “richness of classical American filmmaking, as an artistic system, [which] depends on just this capacity for flexible but bounded variation” (2006: 14).

Works cited Anker, Roy (2009), “Narrative,” in John Lyden (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film, 331–50, London and New York: Routledge. Bazin, André (1967). What Is Cinema? Vol. 1, trans. Hugh Grey, Berkeley: University of California Press. Available online: https://archive.org/stream/Bazin_Andre_What_Is_ Cinema_Volume_1/Bazin_Andre_What_Is_Cinema_Volume_1_djvu.txt (accessed May 1, 2017). Bellour, Raymond (2000), The Analysis of Film, trans. Constance Penley, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Bordwell, David (1985), Narration in the Fiction Film, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Bordwell, David (1989), “Historical Poetics of Cinema,” in R. Barton Palmer (ed.), The Cinematic Text: Methods and Approaches, 369–89, Atlanta: Georgia State. Bordwell, David (2006), The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies, Berkeley: University of California Press.



A Return to Form: Bible, Film Theory, and Film Analysis

173

Bordwell, David, and Noël Carroll (1996), Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Brinkema, Eugenie (2014), The Forms of the Affects, Durham and London: Duke University Press. Buckland, Warren (2012), Film Theory: Rational Reconstructions, Florence: Taylor and Francis. Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda (2016), “General Introduction: The Bible and Its Cinematic Reception,” in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (ed.), The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of the Bible and Its Reception in Film, Part 1, Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception 2, 1–14, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Colman, Felicity (2014), Film Theory: Creating a Cinematic Grammar, New York: Columbia University Press. Copier, Laura (2012), Preposterous Revelations: Visions of Apocalypse and Martyrdom in Hollywood Cinema 1980-2000, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Elsaesser, Thomas, and Malte Hagener (2010), Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses, London and New York: Routledge. Lyden, John, ed. (2009), The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film, London and New York: Routledge. Martin, Joel (1995), “Introduction: Seeing the Sacred on the Screen,” in Joel W. Martin and Conrad E. Ostwalt, Jr. (eds.), Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth, and Ideology in Popular American Film, 1–12, Boulder: Westview. Pisters, Patricia (2011), “The Mosaic Film: Nomadic Style and Politics in Transnational Media Culture,” in Mieke Bal and Miguel Á. Hernández-Navarro (eds.), Thamyris Intersecting, 23: 175–90. Rindge, Matthew (2016), Profane Parables: Film and the American Dream, Waco: Baylor University Press. Rodowick, David (2014), Elegy for Theory, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rushton, Richard, and Gary Bettinson (2010), What Is Film Theory? An Introduction to Contemporary Debates, New York: McGraw-Hill. Stam, Robert (2000), Film Theory: An Introduction, London: Wiley-Blackwell. Schrader, Paul (1972), Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, Berkeley: University of California Press. Wright, Melanie (2006), Religion and Film: An Introduction, London: I. B. Tauris. Wright, Melanie (2007), “Religion and Film,” in Jolyon P. Mitchell and S. Brent Plate (eds.), The Religion and Film Reader, 438–44, London and New York: Routledge.

14

Seven Stations of Affect: Religion, Affect, and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ Robert Paul Seesengood

Opening titles That, if not specifically how, myth and ritual inform one another is a disciplinary truism (see Csapo 2005: 132–80). Ritual actualizes myth; myth explicates and motivates ritual. Together ritual and myth reorganize and recreate the world. S. Brent Plate argues film acts similarly: “Films create worlds. They .  .  . actively reshape elements of the lived world and twist them in new ways that are projected onscreen and given over to an audience” (2008: 1). Conversely, he says, “Myths and rituals operate like films: they utilise techniques of framing, thus including some themes, objects and events while excluding others; and they serve to focus the adherent’s attention in ways that invite humans in to the ritualised world in order to become participants” (2008: 7; see also Wright 2008: 5 and Lyden 2007: 416–20). In addition to film’s role in cosmogony and mythopoesis, film, like religion, is affecting. Affect-critical approaches to film focus on viewer response, but under-attend form and close reading. Here I would like to explore the potential inherent in the turn to affect as a form in Eugenie Brinkema’s 2015 The Forms of the Affects. I will augment her work by closer attention to embodiment (the viewing eye is an embodied eye; affect is embodied meaning). I will apply this theoretical conversation to a critique of the scourging of Jesus in Mel Gibson’s 2004 The Passion of the Christ. Inspired by the traditional “seven sayings” of Jesus from the cross and the seven stations of the Via Dolorosa (a subset of the fourteen stations of the cross linking ritual and myth), I organize this chapter as seven vignettes, a series of mini-reflections on religion, theory, film, affect, and the Bible, all united around the theory-work of Eugenie Brinkema and The Passion of the Christ, all interconnected with affect. The argument that (I hope) emerges: The Passion of the Christ aptly demonstrates how film, religion, and Bible function most effectively in their affects—and these affects arise from their form.



Seven Stations of Affect

175

First station: Affect and the embodied mind Humanities scholarship is turning toward affect and away from complex, theory-driven critique via examination of how art and literature elicit, compel, or create emotion or affect. Affect critique draws not only from historical (Spinoza) and contemporary (Deleuze) continental philosophy, but also from the neurosciences, psychology, sociology, and cultural and media studies (see Sedgwick 2003; Ahmed 2004; Gregg and Seigworth 2010). An established approach in film studies (Brinkema 2015), affect criticism is an emerging concern in biblical studies (see Kotrosits 2015; 2016; Koosed and Moore 2014). The turn toward affect is a turn from a radical, Cartesian duality between body and mind privileging rationality and cognition over sensation and feeling. It is a desire to resist both over-theorizing in critique and superficial a-critical engagement. “Affect theory” is critical attention to feeling, arguing that how a work makes its reader/viewer feel, and the cognition and tactility of feeling itself, are legitimate critical interests. In film critique, affect is analysis of how viewers engage with a film via dialogue, acting, music, setting, lighting, and more. The culmination of the experience of viewing is, affect would assert, not “beneath” the intellectual responses we later form to describe or process the experience. I intend “affect” in both its aesthetic and philosophical sense. In literature reviews, affect scholarship is understood to originate among twentieth-century sociologists and neurobiologists exploring precognitive, automatic responses to stimuli such as fear, disgust, or sexual arousal.1 These emotional reactions/responses occur, and are embodied, prior to awareness or cognition. Affect effects body and mind. In the humanities, some scholarship (after Deleuze) looks at the “in-betweeness” of thinking, thinking that both transcends and precedes consciousness; affect is the construction of “meaning” before determining meaning, the sensing of reality before awareness. In other critiques (after Ahmed and Sedgwick), affect is critical engagement of the embodiment of cognition and the way films or texts engage our feelings as an integral part of meaning.

Second station: Affect, religion, and film Greg Seigworth’s “Wearing the World Like a Debt Garment” (2016), a complex, completely affectual, Deleuzian reading of M. T. Anderson’s Feed, dwells on both flesh and fabric, reminding readers of Mark C. Taylor and his glorification (qua Derrida) of surfaces, fashion, and the ephemeral. Seigworth and Taylor remind us that superficiality is a form of substance, that “skin deep” can be fathomless. “In the end, it all comes down to a question of skin. And bones. The question of skin and bones is the question of hiding and seeking. And the question of hiding and seeking is the question of detection” (Taylor 1997: 11). Skin, like debt, mediates, limits, and conceals. It is also a vehicle for religious expression and subjectivity. It is surprising in its layered depths, its fragile penetrability, and its work-a-day durability. It is the binding of the self, wrapped around a firm spine, giving weight to animated pages within. The mortification of the flesh by religious ascetics attempts transcendence of materiality into immateriality. The body is (self) destroyed. The ascetic “insists these rituals are not

176

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

painful and claims that the pleasure they bring is actually transcendent. . . . Something unforeseen begins to take place: the body become the vehicle for passing beyond the body” (Taylor 1997: 133). Affect, in particular Deleuzian affect, replicates this sort of religious experience. Religion, particularly approaches to religion rooted in the soil of Durkheim, Geertz, and Eliade, is always-already affectual giving expression to the prerational and the proprioceptive.2 Whether we see religion as the recognition and response to “the sacred” (Durkheim, Eliade), as proto-scientific manipulation of spirit forces (Tyler, Stark), or as a systematic creation of reality (Tillich, Geertz), religion is fundamentally a method of both organizing/articulating a-rational ideas and, in the articulation, motivating response. Religion is also, like affect, fundamentally embodied, a “network of bodily practices” (Schaefer 2015: 7). “Affect theory is a necessary tool for mapping religion, not just because it adds to our inventory of descriptive tools, but because affect constitutes the links between bodies and power” (Schaefer 2015: 9). Religion and affect both organize the precognitive and a-rational and are embodied cognition; they transmit directly, body-to-body, feeling-to-feeling. “Affects have their own capacity to articulate bodies to systems of power—what [can be called] compulsion” (Schaefer 2015: 95). The word “religion,” etymologically, in an argument as old as Cicero, has roots in either the Latin religare—to tie or bind—or relegere—to reread (Hoyt 1912). Religion is the ultimate system of debt and binding, superficial ties become folds, a strange and cosmic phylactery. Religion creates social interdependence by indebtedness conferred thorough text and ritual. In every ritual, myth, or sacred text there is that moment of becoming, of interstitiality, between the past and the present, the awareness and quiet perception of antiquity and community, a contiguous narrative made up of the stitching of successive aorists. Affect is, of course, integral to film. Consider, for example, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali’s absurdist, surreal 1929 Un Chien Andalou. The movie has no dialogue, little structure, and no coherent plot. It is a series of mostly disconnected scenes showing various interactions between its only characters: Simone Mareuil and Pierre Batcheff. In the movie’s iconic scene, Batcheff holds open the left eye of Mareuil and appears to slice her eye open with a straight razor. We see Batcheff standing behind a seated Mareuil, draw back his right arm, then a sudden cut to a razor slicing through an eye (the eye of a dead pig, but the viewer does not know this). As we watch the intraocular fluid pop out, it is impossible to avoid embodied reaction. The sliced eye produces instantaneous, embodied disgust: blink, flinch, look away. This reaction, this embodied, preconscious reaction, is affect. It offers, in its affect, a strikingly complex commentary on the watching-but-not-watching of film, on how the knowledge that we are looking at something unreal, a photograph made by special effects, can still disturb. The affect links film and embodied viewer, creating an instantaneous, transcendent affectual reality.

Third station: Rituals and gatherings; passion plays and public morals The Passion of the Christ is a cinematic passion play. The history of modern theater and, to a degree, modern film has its roots in medieval passion plays (see Twycross



Seven Stations of Affect

177

2006). In the Middle Ages, classical theater was deemed pagan and other theater was condemned for perpetuating immorality and sex. Theater was also immensely popular among the masses and difficult to control. By the Middle Ages, theater was confined to the churchyard and to religious themes. Paramount among them were the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. The passion play was born. For a people largely illiterate, passion plays were instruction in the biblical narrative. But passion plays were generally popular also because they offered a sanctioned place for bawdy scenes and violence; in some cases they became fully carnivalesque (Twycross 2006: 347–52). Passion plays augmented the Bible with popular tradition, adding to (harmonized) gospel accounts of Jesus’s last days set-pieces of comical and sinister Jews, dancing devils, leering Judases, and Sanhedrin villainy and pomp. Plays would pause their narrative for romps or mini-morality plays from Jesus’s life, surrounding Judas’s temptation and fate, Peter’s denial of Jesus, and other biblical and moral scenes. Plays focused action, often graphically, upon Jesus scourged and stricken with rods and thorns and upon Jesus’s travails on step-by-bloody-step of the Via Dolorosa. Pilate’s wife, Veronica, and others enact the viewer’s grief in her protoconversion; blood (often pigs’ blood) and the stench of sulfur nauseated and delighted audiences, as did clockwork, mechanical special effects (Twycross 2006: 360). Mel Gibson’s 2004 Passion of the Christ incorporates all these elements. It has been widely noted that the script is an adaptation of Catherine Emmerich’s The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Brentano [1833] 1904).3 Gibson, however, has repeatedly insisted upon his film’s reliance on the Bible. He does strive for verisimilitude in costumes, and its screenplay is in ancient Aramaic, Latin, and Greek. Gibson’s combination of biblical language and Catholic ritual endorses both modern evangelical and fundamentalist Protestant privileging of biblical literalness and Catholic (pre-Vatican II) tradition. The Passion of the Christ has a structural frame of an arrested, beaten, and then staggering Jesus who bleeds through every set-station of the cross. Gibson frequently uses mini-scenes (via character memories) to tell lessons from Jesus’s life. A weeping Claudia gives Mary linens for Jesus’s blood and binding; Veronica meets a stumbling Jesus on the road to Calvary. The Jewish Sanhedrin are hook-nosed, wild-eyed, elaborately robed, stereotypically Jewish-looking villains. The Romans and Jewish royals live in pomp and pageantry. Satan and his demons slither intermittently through the film. The intersections of Bible, film, and passion plays neither originate nor culminate in Gibson. Among the earliest examples of narrative cinema is the 1898 Passion Play at Oberammergau, which was followed by several silent “life of Jesus” and passion play films in the early silent film era (Reinhartz 2009: 214–16). Film and theater have a similar narrative of perceived deviance and attempted suppression (see Mitchell and Plate 2007: 7–42). As cinema matured, scripts and images pushed the boundaries of public mores. Many religious authorities attempted to impose “morality” restrictions and codes. The industry “voluntarily” adopted a system of content rating. Filmmakers such as Cecil DeMille filmed biblical stories as morality narratives. Doing so, particularly when one wrapped the activity in rhetoric of “most biblical” and “highly edifying,” resulted in public acclaim despite graphic sexuality and violence. Gibson encountered significant prerelease opposition for his movie’s violence and portrayal of Jews, but produced the most watched, rated-R movie in American history

178

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

(Miramax 2004: xi, 127–45). Using the same technique as DeMille, Gibson released his film on Ash Wednesday. Marketing materials were sent to churches and Christian organizations, encouraging them to take groups of viewers—youth groups, Bible study groups, prayer groups—to view the movie during Lent. Miramax developed and distributed viewer guides for small group discussion and also produced scholarly volumes for academics who wanted to teach through-or-with the movie (Miramax 2004). Christian groups made viewing the film a communal and liturgical act, rendering its graphic violence “safe” (perhaps necessary).

Fourth station: Toward a critical, affective film theory The humanities’ affective turn was largely heralded by film theory, where affect is a response to over-reliance upon structuralism, formalism, or screen critique. In the oft-cited description of Steven Shaviro (1993; see also 2004), affect-influenced film theory is moving from psychobiological and social understandings of viewer response into “visceral, affective responses to film, in sharp contrast to most critics’ exclusive concern with issues of form, meaning, and ideology” (Shaviro 1993: 10; emphasis added). Affect criticism expands wooden Lacanian psychoanalytic approaches to spectatorship where spectators resonate with empathy for characters (particularly protagonists). Shaviro argues emotion is the after-effect of affect. Affect in its Deleuzian sense is a transfer of will and of consciousness via mechanisms and forms that produce that a/effect. Following Shaviro, Eugenie Brinkema expands current affect-oriented film theory via appeal to, and very close analysis of, form; she retheorizes close reading as affective reading. Her 2015 book offers a trenchant critique of issues of film, affect, and form and how these intersect with horror, grief, gender, and violence. “The affective turn in film and media studies has produced repeated versions of the reification of the passions; films produce something in the audience, or, sometimes, in the theorist, or sometimes, in the theorist alone” (Brinkema 2015: 31; her emphasis). Yet, as Brinkema notes, the affect-corrective to film studies has, at times, overdrawn its own assumptions and constructed a superficial approach where affect is found only on the skin and only in the viewer. She notes that, for some affect-critics, to probe too deeply beneath surface structures is to mar with scars and excisions of autopsy, to obliterate the site by excavation, but “reading for form does not involve a retreat from other theoretical, political and ethical commitments” (2015: 39). Brinkema argues affect is not superficial, but that the surface is (in a Foucaultian sense) a “fold,” the exterior made complex by the discovery of its attachment to an interior. To discover form is to discover affect. Much like formalism cautioned against the “intentional fallacy” in literature, Brinkema argues attention to form avoids an “affective fallacy,” the assertion that (a viewer’s own) emotional response simply is and is beyond critique. Brinkema argues affect is only, can only be, a form of form. Affect is inherent and emergent. She advocates for a “radical formalism” that, for film criticism and literature, “would take the vital measure of theory for form and take the measure of form for affectivity” (2015: 37; her emphasis).



Seven Stations of Affect

179

Brinkema’s desire to locate affect in form may seem to underplay embodiment (2015: 40–41). She recognizes this weakness, acknowledging her argument relies upon a methodology (affect critique), which has, as its core assumption, embodiment. If one places the whole of affect within the form (and, furthermore, a form that requires close reading) one eliminates (or reduces) the impulsivity (compulsivity) of affect. Affect depends upon sensation; sensation requires embodiment. Brinkema’s tentative solution is to argue embodiment itself is a form of form, that “Body itself is a kind of form” (2015: 40). Brinkema is certainly correct to note that affect arises from form and that there is an absolute imperative to close reading and analysis. She is correct, as well, to return to a sense of “affect” that resonates with Deleuze (and, in turn, Deleuze’s readings of Foucault and Spinoza) and neurobiology, where affect is motivating or eliciting force, a transferring of energy and discovery, an intermediary between text-image and readerviewer. The viewer is participant with/in/and viewing and the making of meaning. The meaning of affect in film (perhaps unique to viewing over reading) is that interstitial, preconscious moment of the transfer itself: the jolt at a sudden sound, the wince at the sight of blood, the aroused crossing of the legs, a transfer which eludes (or elides) because it precedes (or evades) conscious cognition. She is also very correct that “we may well be at the beginning of what will be called the twenty-first-century ‘return to form’ in the humanities” (2015: 39). Like theory and subjectivity, body and affect must somehow be correlated to the shift toward form. Affect links viewer and film; affect links religion and film; religion links mythology and ritual; surfaces link, via the fold, to depths; affect links cognition and embodiment. Like rituals, movies are the affective embodiments of narrative and sign. All flow in succession to create meaning.

Fifth station: Seeing is believing: The embodied, affective eye Film is photography, complex structures and interplays between absence and presence, darkness and light. As Plato notes, the gazing at shadows has a real e/affect. Film is an Eleusinian mystery; things shown, spoken, and seen coalesce into “meaning.” In many ways, film criticism can be rightly called the explication of the obvious. It is the explanation of a photograph (to be exact, a series of photographs changed at twentyfour frames a second). Photographs are the result of blocking light. What we see is the residue of light passing through a negative, the absence of substance. We see the residue, very precisely, of nothing. A “photograph” is a writing, an inscription, in/of/ by light. A photograph is a text composed in light. A motion picture is a series of photographs, a series of light-essays in need of interpretation. When these mini-texts flash by, a series of photographs are given coherence and continuity by our brains. Our optic nerves are stimulated by the flashing lights. Our brains are awash with stimuli to the occipital and temporal cortices (identifying shape; noting—creating—velocities and trajectories of items in motion), Heschl’s gyrus (the brain’s auditory region), and Wenicke’s area (language processing). Our brains become active in the limbic areas (emotion), the fusiform gyrus (facial recognition) as if we are seeing something “real.” But none of this motion or narrative exists. Cinema is a

180

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

mental construct. Movies, as movies, only exist in our minds. Motion, not to mention narrative coherence (and “meaning”), arises from sequential, referential reading and interpretation by an embodied, active viewer. To watch a film is to be a reader who knits together a series of discrete, intact, ultimately separable “texts” into a coherent, meaningful whole. Every movie is an instance of Barthian intertextuality. Roland Barthes’s final work, Camera Lucida (1981), is a profoundly moving study on the death of Barthes’s mother and the feelings her loss awakened within him (discussed at length in Brinkema 2015: 76–112). Throughout, Barthes discusses photographs, photographic technology, and ponders their relationship to reality, nostalgia, and memory. The photograph permanently captures a single present. There is no past in a photograph, only its residue; photographs are allusions to time. Photographs resonate with the present, they hint at their own referentiality but do not possess any, and they may become artifacts of the past even though they have none. These senses of meaning are constructs, Barthes argues; photographs possess memory, meaning, and affective power only to those who know what they are seeing. Except that they do not. Certainly, affective engagement with context or memory can enliven a photograph, but some photographs will possess a visceral, vital affect regardless of context. A photo, even if fully abstract, can produce delight, fear, sadness, or disgust. Certainly, a photograph’s ability to produce some types of affect—in particular nostalgia—needs a knowing viewer. But there is an inherent, persistent affect in the form of the photograph, itself. Turing to cinema: photographs as photographs are given context, and, so, meaning is applied to their affect. Photographs are still aorist. They still, independently, have no context or continuity, yet their sequential progression produces, by both conscious and unconscious cognition of the viewer, a sense of history and continuity, a narrative, a past, and a possible future. They will, in sequence, proceed toward a larger narrative or sequence, even though film, like dream, fundamentally violates “real” possibilities of perspective and time. Movies produce affect via their forms as this process of discovery, but also by analytic cognition. Neurobiologically, the mechanisms for perception, about 45 percent of the brainwave activity for someone watching a movie, are uniform, but the part of the brain that responds to (interprets) this process, centers for emotion and higher cognition, the other 55 percent, vary widely. What we see is the same, but varies in its appropriation. That difference is the “reader”—her experience (memory, knowledge, nostalgia) producing and responding to affect (disgust, fear, arousal, anger). We both do and do not see the same movie, even as movies both do and do not exist outside our minds.

Sixth station: Cutting Jesus Jesus is whipped. In Mark (and Matthew), Pilate has Jesus scourged in preparation of crucifixion (Mk 15:15; Mt. 27:26). The scene is easy to miss; it is a single aorist participle (“after scourging him”) at the beginning of a sentence with a more ominous and show-stopping finale (“they led him out to be crucified”). In Luke, there is no



Seven Stations of Affect

181

scourging of Jesus; Pilate offers to have Jesus scourged (23:22) but the crowds demand crucifixion. In Jn 18:1-3, Pilate has Jesus scourged mid-trial (presumably to placate the crowd); afterward, Jesus returns for a second interview and condemnation. John’s treatment is longer than that of the Synoptic Gospels—a full sentence of seven words. Jesus’s scourging is not a central part, in terms of narrative space, in the gospel passions. In The Passion of the Christ, the scourging takes over thirteen minutes, more than 10 percent of the movie. Jesus is beaten with rods first. He does not cry out. Driven to his knees, at the end, he stands back up. The guards, seeing this defiance, begin again using a “cat-of-nine-tails” to better tear flesh. This time Jesus is driven to the ground. We see his (bloody) hands still chained to a post, see two soldiers mercilessly whipping him, see blood spatter, but his body is gone; only Jesus’s bloody, clinching hands remain in the shot. The beating is so violent and extensive that the soldiers tire. Their initial leering, strutting, taunting expressions become side-eyes, bent forward, hands on knees, out of breath. “How can he keep going on like this?” we see them ask through glances and exchanges. The crowd members look away. So, often, does the camera; taking cues from the way the gospels struggle with the terror inherent in crucifixion, Gibson, himself, cannot avoid the occasional wincing blink (see Goodacre 2004). Jesus’s mother must walk away, a single tear staining her face (the whipping’s cadence still heard; the beating occasionally glimpsed over her shoulder in racking focus). Jesus’s back is beaten raw; the order is given to turn him over for yet a third round of whipping. Satan moves in-and-among the crowds and soldiers—first alone, then stroking a grotesque baby. The scene builds anxiety and anticipation. It opens with soldiers roughly stripping then lashing Jesus to a post; the weaponry is brought out and arrayed on a table. Jesus is forced to bend forward, stripped, his buttocks distended toward the soldiers who stand behind him, a posture of male-rape. Jesus is beaten to the ground, left lying prone. He is rolled over to be whipped on his chest, stomach, and genitals. Jesus’s virgin flesh is torn and opened. It is moistened, wet with blood. Blood spatters soldiers, the crowds, and runs down Jesus’s side(s). Jesus gasps. He moans. He closes his eyes and rubs his head against the pillar. He does not scream. He does not beg. He does not curse or plead. He endures. As the scene opens, he prays to God, “My heart is ready”; during the scene, his mother opines that Jesus’s powers could end it, but he will not. Jesus’s body is forced, opened, torn, and consumed. We see the soldiers act. We see Jesus’s face in response. We see the spattering blood, the shaken body of Jesus. We hear the breathless soldiers grunt. We hear Jesus’s stifled cries and gasps. We hear the labored breathing of both beaten and beating. The scene continues until a Roman commander intervenes, sickened by the violence—unwilling to watch what Gibson, and apparently we, were willing to see. Later when Jesus reappears before Pilate, his beaten state clearly unnerves (unmans?) a disgusted Pilate. As Jesus’s beaten body is taken from the scourging place, the pillar where Jesus was tied stands, shot from above, a divine perspective. The entire area is soaked with pooled and spattered blood, a void left where Jesus’s body had been. Claudia has given linens to a bewildered Mary; she uses them to soak up the blood, a mother’s desire to keep any memento of her son. Jesus’s endurance empowers him in ways that draw from a long tradition in martyr literature, where the martyr’s noble suffering unmans and demoralizes his torturers (see Moore and Anderson 1998). As

182

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Jesus lies on his back, he sees a blood-spattered Roman sandal and recalls washing his disciples’ feet. The effect of this central scene lies in its affect(s). It produces, in turn: disgust, horror, sadness, awe. It unites weakness (in submission to pain) and power (in the endurance of it). This scene is visceral, a carving up and out of the body of Jesus. It “mans” Jesus, showing both his humanity but also his extra-human resolve. The psycho-sexual element of this scene is appropriate. Jesus is engaging in the ultimate BDSM moment (see Moore 1996: 76–129). Jesus is submitting to pain out of love, his body hurt for the love of another. He is defiantly submissive, dominantly passive. The scene is grossly affective. Viewers wince, squirm, ache as the scene progresses; it humiliates, disturbs and angers, terrifies.

Seventh station: Feeling terrible: The passion and/as horror Is The Passion of the Christ a horror movie?4 It certainly opens that way. Jesus’s prayer in Gethsemane is accompanied by a leering Satan. The music, the lighting, the mood of the scene is horror. Jesus’s flagellation and crucifixion drip with blood and gore. Judas’s demise is a montage of madness and horror. Horror vacillates between excitement (at times quasi-sexual) and disgust. Horror discloses even as it obliterates superficiality: bodies are ripped open, and the reality (of evil) is exposed and foregrounded. Horror requires bodies: the fearful eye, the rigid hand, the open mouth, torn flesh, blood, but also discovery and reflection. Horror, as a genre, has affective forms of both the disembodied and unseen, the fearful abyss beneath the surface or skin. Ultimately the affect of horror is the Freudian unheimlich, and the membranes between the unheimlich and the sacred are precariously thin. Bruce Kawin notes the ritual setting of the horror movie, a ritual descent beneath the surface, into the underworld glimpsed within a darkened room (2012: 360–61). Criticism of horror movies, in terms of affect, often focuses upon two principal aspects: disgust and powerlessness, both seen in the body’s dismemberment (Brinkema 2015: 152–81). Freud’s famous essay associates the unheimlich with the embodied sensation of not only repulsiveness, but also disgust and (unwanted) discovery. Crude, consumptive, embodied actions (expectoration, regurgitation, defecation, urination, mastication, flatulence, gestation—things within bodies now bursting out) are the antithesis of reason and thought; disgust is triggered by (what are considered) baser forms of embodiment: viscera, foul odors, excrement, blood. When Freud mounts this argument, he is capitulating to a millennia-old conceit: cognition, reason, and intellect are higher and more noble than bodily drives, processes, or affect. Often seen as the antithesis of aesthetics (as well as of reason), horror and disgust have influenced gospel criticism (see Moore 1996; 2001: 173–99) and also film studies exploring horror and pornography.5 Mikita Brottman argues that horror and disgust arise most acutely not just from images associated with refuse, but particularly with consumption, rending, and dismemberment (and exposure) of bodies (1997). As bodies are torn and fragmented, particularly human bodies, we are aroused to disgust and repulsion. Horror, as a film genre, exploits this primal reaction, often blurring it



Seven Stations of Affect

183

into highly sexualized images and violence. Violence becomes a cipher for possession and control (or its loss). As Brottman points out, there is an inherent element of consumption and of being consumed (or torn), of implicit cannibalism in horror. We are reacting to a fear of bringing impurities into our bodies, even as we fear being torn and eaten. The affect of horror is a fear of both eating and being eaten, a fear of both being torn and becoming cannibal. Horror lacerates barriers between concealment and exposure, interior and exterior, skin and depth. Mary Ann Beavis has carefully reviewed the role of Bible in horror films (2016), mapping the role of Bible in these films in transitioning the viewer from skepticism to “piety” (her term). Bible functions to both explain and legitimate (and, sometimes, defeat) the forces of evil. In Gibson, Bible is horror. The flaying of Jesus’s flesh in the scourging scene is (with some, but not much, argument) the bloodiest scene in Gibson’s film. The entire scene—the characters, the set, the props, the mise-en-scène— is spattered with Jesus’s blood. To see the rending of flesh and the shedding of Jesus’s blood, however, is also to be reminded of Christianity’s central ritual enactment of myth: the final supper or communion. Jesus identifies the bread with his own body “broken (torn) for you,” the cup becomes his blood shed on behalf of others, a ritual the film alludes to as Jesus remembers washing Peter’s feet during his scourging. The flagellation of Jesus is disgusting because of its focus upon blood. Its affect is heightened because it becomes a moment of communion as well. It is terrible in its centralization of a character writhing in pain, it is unnerving in its celebration of brutality and savagery. But what produces the central horror is its function as the actualization of Jesus’s words. His body is broken and fragmented. His blood is sprayed over the onscreen audience as if it were blood spattered on an altar in consecration, water scattered upon a believer in baptism. The scene’s deeply embedded affect of disgust produces a disgusted, nauseated viewer, a viewer whose own affect causes them to turn away and “reject” Jesus. It forces the viewer to enact the movie’s central ideology even as it depicts the most central, sacred moment: the tearing of Jesus’s body, the breaking of Jesus for the sake of humanity and human sin, the scattering and washing in the blood of Jesus.

Final credits In The Passion of the Christ the dis-embodiment of the divine body—effected via the slow, disgusting dis-enfleshment, de-carnational beating of Jesus—is deeply, pervasively affectual. Fragmentation and dis-embodiment writhe beneath and through the genre of horror with its fear of mastication and being consumed (predation), fear of losing control over self and body, fear of forced cannibalization. Religion and horror are genres more integrated than not. Harvey Whitehouse notes the inter-engagement of religion, ritual, and fear (2008: 268–70; see the discussion in Schaefer 2015: 53–54) Fear functions, Whitehouse argues, as ritual’s principal affect (a “holy fear”), particularly in rituals of consecration, atonement, and ordination. Religious affect, in particular, trades in various forms of fear (the “awe and tremor” of Durkheim’s sacred). “Religious affects .  .  . are not cosmetic: they are the material substance of power,

184

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

enticing bodies into political regimes. ‘Fear’, Ahmed shows, ‘does something’” (Schaefer 2015: 55; quoting Sarah Ahmed, 126; her emphasis). Viewer reception of The Passion of the Christ was polarizing. Advocates reported quickened faith and renewed devotion to Jesus. Critics were appalled by the violence and cast as anti-Christian. Gibson’s portrayals of Jews were charged with anti-Semitism. Academic biblical scholarship was, and remains, very frustrated. In many ways, this reaction both misses, and is, the point of the movie; The Passion of the Christ, like religion itself, is affectual. Affect is also central to the power of religious ritual and activity. Religion is a way of re-ordering and restraining thoughts or experiences that are irrational (or a-rational). It folds in the superficial into new depth in its folding of the affectual response into the cognitive. Religion and film cohere, as Plate suggests, because they use common elements of narrative, semiotics, and ritual to create a new imaginary “world” (2008), but also because all these elements agree to create affect. Gibson’s use of violence links the affect of violence, and horror, to the devotion of Jesus. The Passion of the Christ folds a great deal of violence (and sublimated sexuality) beneath a pious surface. Jesus’s body is beautiful, important to creating the horror to come. We watch this body beaten and systematically broken over the next two hours. The film’s affect lies largely in watching beauty ruined (for love), and the emotions that this violence produces drip and pool to form the texture of the movie’s affectual turn.

Notes 1 The term originates in Tompkins (1962). See also Sedgwick (2003), Koosed and Moore (2014). 2 Laruen Berlan’s term as employed by Seigworth (2016: 13). 3 For surveys of Jesus movies, see Walsh (2003), Staley and Walsh (2007), Tatum (2013), and Malone (2012). On Gibson’s film, see also Miramax (2004). 4 For affirmative answers, see McGeough’s chapter in this book, and Walsh (2008). 5 Pomerance (2004), Carroll (1990), and Freeland (2000). See also Adams and Yates (1997) for an early work fusing literature on the ugly and disgusting and religious discourse.

Works cited Adams, James Luther, and Wilson Yates, eds. (1997), The Grotesque in Art & Literature: Theological Reflections, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Ahmed, Sara (2004), The Cultural Poetics of Emotion, New York: Routledge. Barthes, Roland (1981), Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard, New York: Wang and Hill. Beavis, Mary Ann (2016), “From Skepticism to Piety: The Bible and Horror Films,” in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (ed.), The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of the Bible and Its Reception in Film, 2 Vols., 1: 223–35, Handbooks of the Bible and its Reception, 2, Berlin and Boston: DeGruyter.



Seven Stations of Affect

185

Brentano, Clemens ([1833] 1904), The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ: From the Meditations of Anne Catherine Emmerich, New York: Benziger Brothers. Available online: http://catholicplanet.com/ebooks/Dolorous-Passion.pdf (accessed December 15, 2016). Brinkema, Eugenie (2015), The Forms of the Affects, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Brottman, Mikita (1997), Offensive Films: Toward an Anthropology of Cinéma Vomitif, Westport: Greenwood. Carroll, Noël (1990), The Philosophy of Horror, New York: Routledge. Csapo, Eric (2005), Theories of Mythology, Ancient Culture 1, Oxford: Blackwell. Freeland, Cynthia (2000), The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror, Boulder: Westview. Freud, Sigmund (1919), “The Uncanny” (“Das Unheimliche”), trans. Alix Strachey. Available online: www.mit.edu/allenmc/www/freud1.pdf (accessed January 13, 2017). Goodacre, Mark (2004), “The Power of The Passion: Reacting and Over-Reacting to Gibson’s Artistic Vision,” in Kathleen E. Corley and Robert Webb (eds.), Jesus and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ: The Film, the Gospels and the Claims of History, 28–44, New York: Continuum. Gregg, Melissa, and Gregory J. Seigworth, eds. (2010), The Affect Studies Reader, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Hoyt, Sarah F. (1912), “The Etymology of Religion,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 32 (2): 126–29. Kawin, Bruce F. (2012), “Children of the Light,” in Barry Keith Grant (ed.), Film Genre Studies IV, 360–81, Austin: University of Texas Press. Koosed, Jennifer L., and Stephen D. Moore, eds. (2014), Affect Theory and the Bible [Special Issue], Biblical Interpretation 22 (4–5). Kotrosits, Maia (2015), Rethinking Early Christian Identity: Affect, Violence and Belonging, Minneapolis: Fortress. Kotrosits, Maia (2016), “How Things Feel: Biblical Studies, Affect Theory, and the (Im) Personal,” Brill Research Perspectives in Biblical Interpretation, 1 (1): 1–53. Lyden, John C. (2007), “Film as Religion: Myths, Morals and Rituals,” in Jolyon Mitchell and Brent Plate (eds.), The Religion and Film Reader, 416–20, New York: Routledge. Malone, Peter (2012), Screen Jesus: Portrayals of Christ in Television and Film, Toronto: Scarecrow. Miramax (2004), Perspectives on The Passion of the Christ: Religious Thinkers and Writers Explore the Issues Raised by the Controversial Movie, New York: Miramax. Mitchell, Jolyon, and S. Brent Plate, eds. (2007), The Religion and Film Reader. London and New York: Routledge. Moore, Stephen D. (1996), God’s Gym: Divine Male Bodies of the Bible, New York: Routledge. Moore, Stephen D. (2001), God’s Beauty Parlor And Other Queer Spaces in and Around the Bible, Contraversions: Jews and Other Differences, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Moore, Stephen D., and Janice Capel Anderson (1998), “Taking it Like a Man: Masculinity in 4 Maccabees,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 117 (2): 249–73. Plate, S. Brent (2008), Religion and Film: Cinema and the Recreation of the World, Short Cuts, London: Wallflower. Pomerance, Murray, ed. (2004), Bad: Infamy, Darkness, Evil, and Slime on Screen, Albany: State University of New York Press. Reinhartz, Adele (2009), “Jesus Movies,” in William L. Blizek (ed.), Continuum Companion to Religion and Film, 211–21, New York: Continuum.

186

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Schaefer, Donovan (2015), Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution, and Power, Durham: Duke University Press. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (2003), Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Seigworth, Gregory J. (2016), “Wearing the World Like a Debt Garment: Interface, Affect and Gesture,” Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization, 16 (4): 15–31. Shaviro, Steven (1993), The Cinematic Body, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Shaviro, Steven (2004), Post-Cinematic Affect, Winchester, NY: Zero. Staley, Jeffrey L., and Richard Walsh (2007), Jesus, the Gospels, and Cinematic Imagination: A Handbook to Jesus on DVD, Louisville: Westminster. Tatum, W. Barnes (2013), Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years, 3rd ed., Salem: Polebridge. Taylor, Mark C. (1997), Hiding, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tompkins, Silvan (1962), Affect, Language, Consciousness, New York: Springer. Twycross, Meg (2006), “The Theater,” in John F. A. Sawyer (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Bible and Culture, 338–62, Oxford: Blackwell. Walsh, Richard (2003), Reading the Gospels in the Dark: Portrayals of Jesus in Film, New York: Trinity International Press. Walsh, Richard (2008), “The Passion as Horror Film: St. Mel of the Cross,” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 20 (2008). Available online: https://www.questia.com/ library/journal/1G1-196832889/the-passion-as-horror-film-st-mel-of-the-cross (accessed January 3, 2017). Whitehouse, Harvey (2008), “Terror,” in John Corrigan (ed.), The Oxford Handbook on Religion and Emotion, 259–75, New York: Oxford. Wright, Melanie J. (2008), Religion and Film: An Introduction, New York: I. B. Taurus.

15

Rock Me Sexy Jesus?: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Films Rhiannon Graybill

The more things change, the more they stay the same: a cliché, but a true one with reference to the representation of gender and sexuality in biblical films. For nearly half a century, while biblical scholars have done significant work on questions of gender and sexuality—not only excavating what can be reconstructed about ancient understandings, but also exploring how else to respond to ancient texts and categories (scholarship in the subjunctive or even contrafactual mood)—biblical films have typically taken a much more traditional approach. Not only are such films conservative regarding gender and sexuality, they are conservative in a way that reflects modern concerns, rather than ancient ideas or realities. Before turning to the biblical films themselves, I want to offer a brief illustration with reference to a non-biblical film, the 2008 indie comedy Hamlet 2. The film centers on an attempted sequel to Hamlet, a questionable act of dramatic innovation undertaken by failed-actor-turned-high-school-drama-teacher, Dana Marschz (played by Steve Coogan). While the film is mostly concerned with satirizing the inspirational teacher genre, it also includes a musical number wherein Marschz, in the role of Jesus, descends from heaven into an adoring crowd, who greet him by dancing and singing “Rock Me Sexy Jesus.” Though initially clad in a white robe, reminiscent of Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), this Sexy Jesus quickly strips to a white undershirt and tight jeans, the better to dance, grab his crotch, fight the devil, and moonwalk on water (since merely walking would be too pedestrian!). While a musical number like “Rock Me Sexy Jesus” might seem subversive—and indeed, conservative Christian protesters against the play “Hamlet 2” are part of the larger plot—it is striking to note the degree Hamlet 2 hews to traditional scripts of gender and sexuality in biblical film. Jesus is masculine, though not aggressively so. He proves attractive to both men and women, though the male desire is the object of satire and ridicule. The role of women, meanwhile, is mostly to adore Jesus, who remains chaste, sexy, and largely silent. And in the traditional biblical film, kal va-chomer (how much more so). Returning to the domain of “traditional” biblical films (by this I mean films that are “based on” the Bible), I will advance two arguments: first, that the representation of gender and sexuality in biblical films are highly traditional, and second, that these

188

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

films reflect notions of gender and sexuality from their cultural moment of production, while communicating very little about gender and sexuality as these categories were understood, experienced, or challenged in the ancient world. A secondary influence, also unrelated to the biblical world as such, is the pull of preexisting generic conventions; a film about Jesus is more likely to be influenced by prior films about Jesus than by knowledge about life in first-century Palestine. Thus while what scholars understand about gender and sexuality in the ancient world evolves, this progress has little influence on the representation of gender and sexuality in biblical films. Many of the chapters of this companion explore the margins of possibility in and around the Bible and film, dwelling fruitfully in ambiguity, iconoclasm, and anachronism. These chapters teach new ways to read, to watch, and to see. This chapter, in contrast, will remain in the dreary turf of normative representations. Do not let Sexy Jesus with his tight jeans and his gyrating hips fool you—there is little new to see here. Instead, conservative and essentialist ideas of gender and heteronormative representations of sexuality are repeated almost exclusively. The films vary, but the representations of gender and sexuality remain consistent. In order to draw out the extensive repetitions of representations between films, I emphasize three Bible films: the 1973 passion play musical Jesus Christ Superstar, the 1998 animated family film The Prince of Egypt, and the 2014 Darren Aronofsky blockbuster with philosophical ambitions, Noah. I will introduce other examples as appropriate. My aim is not to offer a strict checklist, but rather to point to the family resemblance between such films and concerns such as gender and sexuality.

Ecce Homo, Ecce Hero The cinematic economy of the biblical film is heavily masculine and focused on a male hero. In Jesus films, this man is almost always Jesus; one exception is Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), which centers on a Jesus-doppelgänger, Brian. (Of course, this misidentification is at the center of the plot and provides much of the comic material.) In movies based on the Hebrew Bible, the protagonist is a heroic male character from the text: Noah (Noah’s Ark 1999, Noah 2014), Joseph (Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat 1999, Joseph: King of Dreams 2000), Moses (The Ten Commandments 1956, Exodus: Gods and Kings 2015), David (David and Bathsheba 1959, King David 1985), Samson (Samson and Delilah 1949), and so forth. Female characters are almost never central protagonists; the only real exceptions in the case of the Hebrew Bible are the films The Red Tent (2014; the film version of Anita Diamant’s novel about Dinah) and One Night with the King (2006), which retells the story of Esther. Both of these films are pitched at women; The Red Tent originally aired as a Lifetime original miniseries. With respect to the New Testament, there are a number of films about Salome, one possible exception to the otherwise overwhelming masculine logic (see Bach 1997: 248–58; Vander Stichele herein). The male character is not simply at the center of the film; he also drives its plot. By way of example, consider Noah. As its title suggests, Noah is less a film about the catastrophic flood sent to destroy the earth than a film about the character of Noah. To this end, God



Rock Me Sexy Jesus?: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Films

189

never speaks, heightening the focus on Noah. In both his relationships to his family and his interactions with outsiders, Noah’s masculinity is repeatedly emphasized, from his (frequently bare-armed) physical labor in building the ark to his final, climactic physical fight with Tubal-Cain, an interloper on the ark (McGeough 2016: 20). When the male protagonist is defined by his relationship to other characters and not simply to a belief (as in Noah), then these significant characters are nearly always men. In the case of The Prince of Egypt, the focus of the plot is Moses’s coming-of-age (Rohrer-Walsh 2002: 77–78; and herein). Compared to the text in Exodus, which it follows fairly closely (though with some cinematic embellishments and variances), the film plays up Moses’s struggles with his own identity, and in particular, his relationship with Pharaoh, who he views as a brother. The relationship between men is central. (Indeed, the “You Who I Called Brother” plotline is so strong that Miriam and Tzipporah, characters who only rarely interact in the biblical text, are shoehorned into a complementary “sisters” plotline, with a duet of their own.) In Jesus Christ Superstar, there are two vying protagonists and narratives: Jesus, the hero, and Judas, the antihero (Malone 2012: 70, 72). While Ted Neeley’s Jesus remains largely opaque for the first portion of the film, his emotional climax as a character comes in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he cries out in protest against God (the song “Gethsemane (I Only Want to Say)”). This song is the emotional core of Jesus’s character; little wonder Ted Neeley was still performing it regularly four decades later.1 Just as Moses’s story in The Prince of Egypt is echoed and reversed in the character of Pharaoh, so too does Jesus Christ Superstar’s Jesus find his foil in Judas. Judas’s relationship to Jesus is also a focus of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), which adds a childhood friendship between Jesus and Judas to its backstory, as well as a charged emotional relationship throughout (Reinhartz 2013: 74–76). Furthermore, just as a male character occupies the center of the biblical film, so too are such films preoccupied with masculinity, and with the male body in particular. This male stands at the center of a network of desire. In The Prince of Egypt, everyone wants something from Moses—or perhaps simply wants him. The film is careful to mark the interest in Moses expressed by all parties (except Tzipporah, the designated romance subplot) in familial terms. Thus while Rameses, Miriam, Aaron, and Jethro are all drawn to Moses, their desire remains abstemiously proper. In Jesus Christ Superstar, in contrast, the eroticism remains clearly legible. Mary Magdalene’s musical centerpiece, “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” is clearly a love song. Her love for Jesus comes across as erotic, though the film remains coy on whether Jesus feels sexual desire or a “purer” sort of love. (This is less the case in the 2000 Great Performances version, in which Jesus’s desire is more obviously sexual [see Malone 2012: 74–76].) Judas’s relationship to Jesus is likewise a mixture of admiration, anxiety, and jealousy (as it is in The Last Temptation of Christ as well). There are also homoerotic overtones to Jesus Christ Superstar’s Judas, as when Judas sings a reprise of Mary Magdalene’s romantic ballad “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.” Simon Zealotes and Herod likewise each perform erotically charged songs (“Simon Zealotes,” “Herod’s Song [Try It and See]”) about Jesus; even Pilate dreams of him. Jesus, meanwhile, passively receives all of these trajectories of desire. In this way he resembles the desired and pursued Moses of The Prince of Egypt, though with a pronounced erotic draw.

190

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

This positioning of Jesus as object of desire is repeated in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004). The film is almost entirely centered on Jesus’s body and its sufferings, as scholars have noted (e.g., Heschel 2006: 104; Brintnall 2011: 45). Jesus, moreover, is constituted as an object of desire (of varying sorts) for every other character in the film, including Satan, his mother, the beloved disciple, Pilate, and Herod. Satan wishes to tempt him. Mary wishes to comfort him. The other characters, too, have their desires. This erotic logic in biblical film only works to shore up the centrality of masculinity, and of the male body. As Kent Brintnall draws out in a careful analysis, Gibson’s Jesus functions like the hero in the action film (William Wallace, Rambo, any number of others). The torture of his body, which is both extreme and extremely visual, authorizes it as an object of the gaze.2 The film is a film obsessed with the male body.

Angels in the movie house The centering of the biblical film on the male character has consequences for the female characters as well. In their case, the ideal remains that of the “angel in the house”; women exist to support and elevate men. Mary Magdalene, the only woman with a significant role in Jesus Christ Superstar, is primarily involved in caregiving, such as massaging Jesus with ointment, cooling his face, reassuring him (“Everything’s Alright”), and ensuring he sleeps well. Mary collapses the Madonna-whore dichotomy; she is both a (former) prostitute and a maternal figure (the other Marys, including the mother of Jesus, are missing from the film). Jesus Christ Superstar’s Mary resembles Mary in The Last Temptation of Christ, who begins the film as a prostitute and who joins Jesus’s mission. The latter film contains an extended fantasy sequence on the cross, during which Jesus imagines marrying her; after her death in childbirth, he marries Mary of Bethany and her sister Martha. The representation of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute is not biblical; nevertheless, it proves repeatedly compelling to filmmakers (Thimmes 1998: 194) In The Prince of Egypt, in contrast, there is a clear differentiation between women who occupy nurturing roles (Jochebed, Tuya, Miriam) and women who are desirable as objects for sex and love (Tzipporah). Miriam is thus represented as sexless (as well as a bit of a nag), while Tzipporah is highly sexualized. Here, the intersectionality of race and sex again comes into play; it is not coincidental that Tzipporah is portrayed as a sassy black woman (on this trope see Dunn 2008: 3ff). However, it is also worth acknowledging that the film presents a relationship of mutual respect between Tzipporah and Moses and shows the two supporting each other. While the scene where Tzipporah saves Moses from God with a midnight circumcision (Exod. 4:24-26) is missing from the film (perhaps the challenge of reworking it to be appropriate for a children’s film was too great),3 Tzipporah is shown supporting Moses in other ways, including replacing Aaron in the initial interview with Pharaoh that produces the first plague. A somewhat more complicated representation of female characters comes in Aronofsky’s Noah. In the understanding of the film version of Noah, the purpose of the ark is to save the animals alone; the role of his family is to shepherd the animals to



Rock Me Sexy Jesus?: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Films

191

safety, then to die, leaving a world free from human interference and sin. Organizing the film around this vision requires Aronofsky to diverge from the Genesis version of the story, in which Noah and his three sons all bring wives on board the ark, thereby facilitating the postdiluvian repopulating of the earth. Noah’s wife is still present in Aronofsky’s reworking; the only other female human permitted on the ark is Ila, Noah’s adopted daughter and Shem’s wife.4 Fortuitously for Noah’s vision of a world without future human generations, Ila is barren, the result of an attack by violent raiders while she was still a child. Less fortuitously for this vision, Ila’s sterility is cured by the magic touch of her “great-grandfather,” Methuselah, and she becomes pregnant with twin daughters while on board the ark. Noah responds by planning to kill the children when they are born.5 In this reconfiguring of the flood story, gender plays out in important ways. The representation of female characters is highly traditional; Erin Runions notes—and I would agree—“the characterization of the women did little to upset normative gender roles” (Runions 2016: 828). As Noah’s wife, Naameh (the name comes from both midrash and Enoch), suggests, the role of women is to support men. While Noah is preoccupied with his own status as the sole descendant of Seth, and thus the only righteous man on earth, Naameh’s own lineage is never addressed; if she is descended from Cain, as she presumably must be, this does not taint her. Naameh only stands up to Noah when he promises to kill Ila’s unborn children. This suggests that the role of women is to protect children. The representation of Ila, a character wholly invented by Aronofsky, reinforces this theme as well. It is Ila who ultimately persuades Noah not to kill the newborn babies as he has planned; she does so through a dramatic display of maternal love and courage. While this scene constitutes the climax, it also reinforces the notion that the role of women is to nurture and care for others, as well as to bear children. Indeed, Ila’s actions as mother here gain heightened significance when read against an earlier scene where she urges Noah to find Shem a “real” wife who can bear children (compare Runions 2016: 828). Biblical films propagate the notion that the role of women is to create and protect children.6

Good heterosexual families and queer deviant villains Both before and after the flood, the world of Noah is constructed along a rigid orientation toward sexual self-control and heterosexuality. The evil of the prediluvian world is indicated, in part, by the sexual traffic in women; while building the ark, Noah ventures out into the camp of people nearby and immediately hears men offering women for sale. Similarly, Ham proves his goodness prior to the flood by saving a young woman from male sexual predators. Ham’s actions are not simply altruistic; he is also seeking a wife to bring on board the ark with him (however, she is trampled to death before making it onto the ark). It is unclear whether his motivation is sexual desire, the desire for children, the desire for a family, or some mixture thereof; the film declines to untangle these motivations. (Sex is, however, strongly linked to its reproductive function; Ila shies away from sex with Shem while she is sterile. The restoration of her fertility is followed by the film’s first sex scene—between Ila and

192

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Shem—only moments later.) Interestingly, while the traffic in and predation of women is a general sign of evil, neither Noah nor the film that bears his name have any interest in helping or even showing empathy toward these women (compare Runions 2016: 826). The victimized female body is a sign of the larger world of violence that must be erased. The world of Noah is also a pronouncedly heterosexual world; homosexuality is unrepresented and unspoken, even as a threat or negative. Ham is obsessed with finding a wife. Naameh also speaks of her desire for her sons to have families; her desire is both heteronormative and anachronistically framed, insofar as Naameh seems to desire not just families, but the bourgeois heterosexual nuclear family as a model (contrast the archaeologically informed discussion of the ancient Israelite household in Meyers 2012: 109, 118, 123–24ff). Interestingly, rape (heterosexual or homosexual) does not seem to be a threat on the ark; this is surprising especially when the film is compared to the biblical text (e.g., Genesis 34; 2 Samuel 13; Jer. 20:7; see Scholz 2010). For example, the film includes the biblical scene where Ham sees his father’s nakedness (compare Gen. 9:23-24); while this is often interpreted as an act of sexual violence or violation, in the film Ham simply comes across his naked father, passed out on the beach. Furthermore, Noah has wisely passed out face down, so his genitals are safely out of view. Noah’s family, it seems, is a family with “family values.” The emphasis on the family is shared by The Prince of Egypt. Moses’s central conflict is between his allegiance to his Israelite family of origin and his adopted Egyptian family. Both mothers—the Israelite Jochebed and the Egyptian Tuya—voice the importance of the family. Miriam similarly appeals to family when she first encounters the adult Moses. Similarly, the moments of Pharaoh’s humanity come through most clearly when he is represented as father to his own young son (who is eventually killed by the final plague). As The Prince of Egypt is a family movie, there are few suggestions of sexual deviance, though there is the insinuation toward the film’s beginning that Tzipporah, a captured female slave, will be a sex slave for Moses. While the scene is played for laughs—Moses is not yet “enough of a man” for Tzipporah—the scene  is  especially remarkable, given that it is wholly invented by the filmmakers. Later, sex is presented as properly occurring within heterosexual marriage, as represented by the union of Moses and Tzipporah. This image is echoed in Jesus Christ Superstar, where Jesus enters Jerusalem surrounded by children, Mary Magdalene at his side. These scenes are crosscut with scenes of Caiaphas and the other members of the Jewish Sanhedrin, plotting against Jesus’s life. The Jews are all male; they are also dressed in what basically amounts to fetish gear: leather hats and straps; bare chests, metal chest plates (Kessler 2010: 163). Jesus and his followers represent healthy relationships of friendship, love, and “good” hippie sexuality; the Jews are perverse fetishists. The contrast between the wholesome sexuality of Jesus and his followers and their antagonists is heightened even more in the scene where Jesus appears before Herod, who functions as a figure of disgust, an overweight and shirtless man who sings and dances in a campy performance for Jesus (restaged as a Pee-wee Hermann style stage show in the 2000 Great Performances version). Jesus is not amused. In the first shot in the 1973 Superstar, the camera focuses tightly on Herod’s face, then pans back to show his bare chest, which is being stroked



Rock Me Sexy Jesus?: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Films

193

by both men and women with elaborate manicures. The aesthetic is sexually charged and a bit lurid. In contrast with Jesus’s natural flowing locks and linen garment, Herod’s appearance is highly artificial, pointing to the film’s dichotomy between good, natural, heterosexual, family-oriented sexuality and other forms of sexuality, which are coded as perverse. (On representations of Herod as feminine and/or perverse more broadly, see Eschrich 2011: 528–30.) Compared to Herod, Pilate is represented relatively favorably; he is both potent and conventional masculine. This is echoed, as well in The Passion of the Christ. In both films, moreover, Pilate appears in a significant scene with his wife; apparently, this is enough of a gesture toward the “safe” heterosexual couple to elevate Pilate over Herod. The emphasis on the family, and on children in particular, also points to the repeated logic of reproductive futurism in biblical films (see Twomey herein). This idea comes to queer theory from Lee Edelman, who argues that the orientation toward the future, and toward the figure of the child (as in appeals “for the children”), constitutes a compulsory ideology that is structurally and ontologically opposed to the queer (Edelman 2004: 3). The films clearly reflect this orientation toward the child. Noah must choose to spare Ila’s daughters, and thus ensure a future for humanity. (The twin girls will grow up to become wives for Ham and Japheth.) In doing so, the film shores up reproductive futurism (Brintnall 2016). In The Prince of Egypt, Moses must lead the Israelites to freedom; the final scenes show him side by side with Tzipporah, surrounded by children. In a moment balanced between heartwarming and kitsch, Moses even stops to lift a small child. In Jesus Christ Superstar, similarly, Jesus and Mary and the others enter into Jerusalem surrounded by children. In these films, and many others, the future as represented by the children becomes “the structuring fantasy that ensures ‘our collective future’” (Edelman 2004: 113). This is especially striking given that, The Da Vinci Code (2006) aside, Jesus has no “blood” children, even as metaphorical children are also queer children (as in the “houses” of Paris is Burning 1990).7 Of course, this comes at a cost: that of the queer. In Noah, this exclusion is most clearly marked by Ham, though he is never otherwise coded as queer in the text. In Jesus Christ Superstar, the role of the excluded queer is played by Judas. And in The Prince of Egypt, it is the ethnically other Rameses. As Edelman notes, queerness is not a specific sexuality, but rather a position of opposition and exclusion. Thus the ethnically other Rameses, the familially deviant Ham, and the politically/sexually other Judas (racially, as well, as played by Carl Simon) can all occupy the space of the queer in the logic of reproductive futurism as enacted in the Bible film. And so all end up excluded or dead: as Edelman writes, “The sacralization of the Child thus necessitates the sacrifice of the queer” (2004: 28).

Ethnicity and perversity Another important feature that commonly occurs in biblical films is the double coding of sexual deviance and ethnic difference. Of course, this tendency can be traced to the Bible itself, where the ethnic difference of the Canaanites is linked to the sexual

194

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

deviance of Ham in Genesis 9; other passages in the Hebrew Bible likewise associate the Canaanites with perverse sexuality (see, e.g., Stone 1997; Bailey 1995; 2009). The use of sexuality to malign ethnic others—as well as the othering of sexual others— continues as well into the New Testament. In films about Jesus, ethnic difference and sexual perversity (and/or feminization) are typically associated with the Jews. In Jesus Christ Superstar, the villainy of the Jews is doubly marked by their ethnic otherness—though Jesus and his followers are putatively Jews as well, the Jewish Sanhedrin is clearly represented as other—and their sexual otherness, insofar as they dress in light fetish gear. This representation is even more heightened in The Passion of the Christ, where the Jews of the Sanhedrin swish around in long robes, elaborate adornments, and, in one case, a pirate-worthy eyepatch (see Eschrich 2011: 530–31). The same representation continues a long tradition of feminizing Jewish men and representing them as insufficiently masculine (compare Boyarin 1997); this is reinforced in Gibson’s film through the contrast with the perfect masculinity of Jesus (Eschrich 2011: 530), as well as the orientalized debauchery of Herod. In Jesus Christ Superstar, a black piano player, who performs in a manner reminiscent of the minstrel show, accompanies Herod’s song and dance. While it is possible to fold this detail into the larger explanatory rubric of camp, it also uses race to signal sexual deviance. The double representation of sexual deviance and ethnic otherness occurs as well in The Prince of Egypt. While the early scenes show a near-shirtless Moses cavorting with his “brother” Rameses, after his transformation to Hebrew leader, Moses appears dressed in a long robe. There is a sense that proper adornment and covering of the male body is an appropriate practice of masculinity. He wears red, evoking Charlton Heston and his heroic masculinity in The Ten Commandments (1956).8 Rameses, on the other hand, is dressed in revealing, “Egyptian” style clothing that suggests a continuity between the clothing of ethnic others and sexual others. Accordingly, Tzipporah wears the most revealing outfits. Clothing and bodily posture are also used to identify the villains. While in the second half of The Prince of Egypt, Rameses becomes the reluctant villain (necessitated, perhaps, to prevent God from seeming excessively cruel); in the first half the role of comic villain is played by the Egyptian high priests, Huy and Hotep. With their mincing movements, obsession with artifice, artificial and calculated gestures, and general affect, the characters are represented as sexually deviant and suspiciously queer. This is typical of villains in animated films; as Meredith Li-Vollmer and Mark E. LaPointe note, “Villains signal their deviant femininity with their body movements and positioning” (2003: 100). Furthermore, Huy and Hotep are strikingly similar to the Jewish villains in Jesus films, such as the flamboyant Jews in The Passion of the Christ and the leather-fetish Jews of Jesus Christ Superstar. It is also worth considering one additional common trope in the biblical film: the negative associations of gender ambiguity. In Jesus Christ Superstar, Herod’s failure to conform to gender scripts marks him negatively, especially in contrast to the wholesome, securely masculine Jesus. In The Passion of the Christ, the devil is depicted as gender ambiguous; the part is played by a woman dressed as a man and with shaved eyebrows; the character is voiced by a male actor. Satan appears with an ambiguously gendered child, who also tortures Judas. In The Last Temptation of Christ, Satan



Rock Me Sexy Jesus?: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Films

195

appears as a lion with the voice of Judas and a snake with the voice of Mary Magdalene. Subsequently, Jesus is tempted by a young angel, who leads him off the cross and to a new life where he marries first Mary Magdalene, then Mary and Martha of Bethany. This child, though seemingly female, is also somewhat ambiguously gendered; she also turns out to be Satan or his emissary. In both films, gender ambiguity signals evil (Eschrich 2011: 532–33; Brintnall 2011: 45). Interestingly, it is not only Satan who is ambiguously gendered. The question of how to represent God in films entails, as well, questions of gender. While God is frequently represented as a man with a white beard in the sky—as skewered so effectively in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)—biblical films have explored a range of representational strategies. In Noah, God never speaks at all, though the audience sees a sequence of images recalling the primeval history prior to the flood. In The Prince of Egypt, God’s voice is Noah’s voice, manipulated slightly. In Exodus: Gods and Kings, God’s voice is that of a young male child. God is given a female voice in certain nonbiblical movies (e.g., Dogma 1999, It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie 2002, A Little Bit of Heaven 2011); however, most biblical movies maintain a masculine or genderless God. The same gendered constraints do not apply, it seems, to Satan.

Concluding thoughts With respect to both gender and sexuality, the biblical film does very little work of subversion. Instead, films based upon the Bible repeat and reinscribe traditional representations of gender identity, gendered body, sexual desire, and sexuality as such. These are films about male heroes and preoccupied with masculinity and the male body. Female characters are relegated to secondary and supporting status. The film places a high value on the heterosexual family and on reproductive futurism, while casting villains as sexually perverse and ambiguously gendered. Repeatedly, such films employ the double signification of ethnicity and perversity, where sexual difference (homosexuality, kink, promiscuity, and other forms of queer sexuality) and ethnic otherness are mapped onto each other, and gender ambiguity is something to be feared and avoided. At the end of the play-within-a film “Hamlet 2,” Jesus and Hamlet use a time machine to save Ophelia and Gertrude, righting the wrongs of the past, including the wrongs of gender. In the world of biblical films more broadly, no such time machine exists. Jesus may be “sexy,” Jesus may have a time machine and “abs that transcend space and time,” but we are still waiting for a queer messiah after all.

Notes 1 As of 2013, Neeley had sung the role more than 1,700 times, including on a world tour in 2007–10 (Martinfield 2013). 2 Brintnall argues that the very suffering of this body authorizes the gaze, while also opening the possibility of homoeroticism. However, as he further notes, the

196

3 4 5 6

7 8

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

“­ resurrection” moment at the film’s conclusion—in The Passion of the Christ, the literal resurrection of a beautiful naked male body—restores the representation of masculinity as dominant, whole, and unshattered (Brintnall 2011: 58–62). There is also the issue that what, precisely, is happening in this text is difficult to establish. On this point, see Graybill (2016: 39–41). Ila does not appear in the Bible or in other ancient Jewish sources. On the character of Ila, see Lee (2016: n. 20). Why Noah does not simply kill the pregnant Ila is not addressed by the film. Presumably, her restored fertility would, according to Noah’s own logic, pose a continued threat after the children’s death. Here, my reading diverges from Runions, who argues that the film “(cleverly) allows the viewer to come away with competing evaluations of Noah,” including with respect to gender (2016: 826). While I find her argument intriguing with respect to the ethical questions raised by Noah’s actions, I do not perceive substantial destabilizing of norms of gender and sexuality in the ending. I am grateful to Tristram Wolff to connecting these dots for me. On the relationship between The Ten Commandments and The Prince of Egypt, see Schroeder (2003).

Works cited Bach, Alice (1997), Women, Seduction, and Betrayal in Biblical Narrative, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bailey, Randall C. (1995), “They’re Nothing but Incestuous Bastards: The Polemical Use of Sex and Sexuality in Hebrew Canon Narratives,” in Fernando F. Segovia and Mary Tolbert (eds.), Reading from this Place: Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in the United States, Vol. 1, 121–38, Minneapolis: Fortress. Bailey, Randall C. (2009), “‘That’s Why They Didn’t Call the Book Hadassah!’: The Interse (ct)/(x) ionality of Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality in the Book of Esther,” in Randall C. Bailey, Tat-Siong B. Liew, and Fernando F. Segovia (eds.), They Were All Together in One Place? Toward Minority Biblical Criticism, 227–50, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Boyarin, Daniel (1997), Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man, Berkeley: University of California Press. Brintnall, Kent L. (2011), Ecce Homo: The Male-Body-in-Pain as Redemptive Figure, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brintnall, Kent L. (2016), “What Noah Got Right, That Noah Got Wrong.” Available online: http://www.floodofnoah.com/noah-movie-noah-was-right (accessed November 25, 2016). Dunn, Stephane (2008), “Baad Bitches” and Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films (New Black Studies Series), Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Edelman, Lee (2004), No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Durham: Duke University Press. Eschrich, Joey (2011), “‘Behold the Man!’: Constructing the Masculinity of Jesus of Nazareth in Mainstream American Film, 1961-2004,” Men and Masculinities, 14 (5): 520–41. Graybill, Rhiannon (2016), Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets, New York: Oxford University Press.



Rock Me Sexy Jesus?: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Films

197

Heschel, Susannah (2006), “Christ’s Passion: Homoeroticism and the Origins of Christianity,” in Timothy K. Beal and Tod Linafelt (eds.), Mel Gibson’s Bible: Religion, Popular Culture, and “The Passion of the Christ,” 99–108, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kessler, Kelly (2010), Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical: Music, Masculinity, and Mayhem, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lee, Lydia (2016), “The Flood Narratives in Gen 6-9 and Darren Aronofsky’s Film ‘Noah’,” Old Testament Essays, 29 (2): 297–317. Li-Vollmer, Meredith, and Mark E. LaPointe (2003), “Gender Transgression and Villainy in Animated Film,” Popular Communication, 1 (2): 89–109. Malone, Peter (2012), Screen Jesus: Portrayals of Christ in Television and Film, Lanham: Scarecrow. Martinfield, Sean (2013), “A Conversation With Ted Neeley, Hollywood’s ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’,” Huffington Post, August 20. Available online: http://www.huffingtonpost. com/sean-martinfield/a-conversation-with-ted-n_b_3786317.html (accessed November 25, 2016). McGeough, Kevin M. (2016), “The Roles of Violence in Recent Biblical Cinema: The Passion, Noah, and Exodus: Gods and Kings,” Journal of Religion & Film, 20 (2): Article 35. Available online: http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1325&context=jrf (accessed December 24, 2016). Meyers, Carol (2012), Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context, New York: Oxford University Press. Reinhartz, Adele (2013), Bible and Cinema: An Introduction, New York: Routledge. Rohrer-Walsh, P. Jennifer (2002), “Coming-of-Age in The Prince of Egypt,” in George Aichele and Richard G. Walsh (eds.), Screening Scripture: Intertextual Connections Between Scripture and Film, 77–99, Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Runions, Erin (2016), “The Temptation of Noah: The Debate about Patriarchal Violence in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah,” in Rhonda Burnette-Beltsch (ed.), The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of the Bible and Its Reception in Film, Vol. 2: 825–42, Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception 2, Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter. Scholz, Susanne (2010), Sacred Witness: Rape in the Hebrew Bible, Minneapolis: Fortress. Schroeder, Caroline T. (2003), “Ancient Egyptian Religion on the Silver Screen: Modern Anxieties about Race, Ethnicity, and Religion,” Journal of Religion & Film, 7 (2): Article 1. Available online: http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1727&context=jrf (accessed December 24, 2016). Stone, Ken (1997), “The Hermeneutics of Abomination: On Gay Men, Canaanites, and Biblical Interpretation,” Biblical Theology Bulletin, 27 (2): 36–41. Thimmes, Pamela (1998), “Memory and Re-Vision: Mary Magdalene Research Since 1975,” Currents in Research: Biblical Studies, 6: 193–226.

16

“Sooner Murder an Infant in Its Cradle”: Wisdom and Childlessness in The Sweet Hereafter Jay Twomey

My title references William Blake by way of theorist Lee Edelman, in order to set the stage for a Wisdom-inflected discussion of Atom Egoyan’s 1997 film, The Sweet Hereafter. In his important and controversial polemic, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Edelman quotes what is, in his words, “one of Blake’s queerest Proverbs of Hell: ‘Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires’” (Edelman 2004: 75). Whatever Blake’s proverb means, its queering establishes a key to Edelman’s critical project.1 Politics means futurity, for Edelman, in one sense or another—a hopeful orientation toward a more perfect future world. And since politics, as futurity, is so frequently represented by children; and since the queer, in Edelman’s argument, is excluded from the future so represented, from “reproductive futurity,” and therefore from politics itself, Edelman counsels a queer rejection of political projects. It is not enough to repudiate this heterosexist fantasy of the political. Rather than fighting for equality in all domains, queers should self-consciously become the antithesis of futurity that their frequent marginalization from politics (and conservative politics especially) already implies. As Edelman’s subtitle indicates, the psychoanalytic vocabulary of drives is essential to his project in No Future. First the drive understood specifically in terms of pleasure or jouissance. Nonreproductive sex, or rather its pleasure, “exposes sexuality’s inevitable coloration by the drive: its . . . stubborn denial of teleology, its resistance to determinations of meaning . . . and above all its rejection of spiritualization through marriage to reproductive futurism” (2004: 27). Or, as he says in another context, “Jouissance . . . makes all subjects, even those committed to disciplinary norms [queer]2 despite themselves.” Embracing the pure particularity of jouissance is thus a way of resisting the sublimation and appropriation of the drive for the sake of a general futurity. Edelman also casts the insistence of queer pleasure as, and here is the second important use of the language of the drive, “the death drive of the dominant order” (2004: 17), that which undoes the symbolic work by means of which subjects claim coherence and persistence. From a right-wing homophobic perspective queerness is never anything but a morbid “caricature” of life and love anyway (2004: 29).



“Sooner Murder an Infant in Its Cradle”

199

In another essay, touching loosely upon Hamlet, Edelman turns the tables somewhat. The “breeders of life prevent life too,” he says; that is, it is not just queers who are death; by making the child figure the subject in a future strictly consistent with the past (with the lives, the histories, the ideological commitments of the parents), eliminating the openness of futurity in favor of a “fatal” self-enclosure, “breeders” ensure that the child becomes “a tombstone endowed with breath” (Edelman 2011: 167, italics added).3 The Sweet Hereafter may have little to do with queer themes in other ways, but Edelman’s work resonates with the film because of Egoyan’s treatment of children. The story is about a school bus accident that kills many of the children of a small town called Sam Dent. The bus driver, Dolores Driscoll (played by Gabrielle Rose), and one teenager, Nichole Burnell (played by Sarah Polley), survive the accident (although Nichole is paralyzed from the waist down). A “big city lawyer” named Mitchell Stephens (played by Ian Holm) arrives and convinces several bereaved families to join his suit against, in his words, the governmental or corporate “somebody .  .  . [who] made a decision to cut a corner” in the manufacture of the bus, or the installation of the guardrail the bus crashed through. One parent, Billy Ansel (played by Bruce Greenwood), refuses to be a party to the suit. He lost both of his children in the accident. As the mechanic who serviced the bus, and as the only witness to the accident, Billy feels strongly that it was just that, an accident, and that a suit will help no one recover from the loss. But others, including the parents of Nichole, join the suit, and the lawyer starts deposing his clients as witnesses. When it comes time to give her initial account, Nichole—who swears earlier in the film that she would not lie on the stand, no matter what—sabotages the case, falsely blaming Dolores, the bus driver, for speeding down a dangerously windy and slick road. She decides to lie to get back at her father, Sam (played by Tom McCamus). Sam had sexually abused Nichole before her injury. With Nichole’s deception, Stephens’s case founders, and Sam can no longer hope for a settlement. He will now have to struggle financially to help support his family while also paying for Nichole’s medical care. Edelman’s work, including the serendipitous citation from “The Proverbs of Hell,” suggests an approach to thinking The Sweet Hereafter and Wisdom together, an approach that focuses on the death of the children and the temporality their deaths inaugurate. Much of Proverbs is clearly engaged in the effort to instruct children, sons in particular, in their function as guarantors of future well-being. Bruce Walkte, commenting on Prov. 16:31 (“gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life”) and 17:6 (“grandchildren are the crown of the aged, and the glory of children is their parents”), frames the whole issue nicely: “If gray hair by itself crowns a person by displaying [that] he has lived a righteous life . . . how much more his children to the third and fourth generations, to whom he has successfully passed on the family’s testament and secured its heritage into the foreseeable future” (Walkte 2005: 36).4 William Brown, in his contribution to The Child in The Bible, in an unintentionally Foucauldian chapter entitled “To Discipline without Destruction” (abbreviating Prov. 19:18), comments that “there are no ‘grown-ups’ in Proverbs. Progress along wisdom’s path will always be marked with baby steps” (2008: 81). This is because in verses like Prov. 4:3-6 (“when I was a son to my father, and tender and favorite one of my mother”) there is no personal information about the father or sagacious elder.

200

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

The “personal element,” Brown observes, “is all but missing; nothing is particularly revealed about the father’s childhood in relation to his sons’ other than that he, too, had to carry the weight of tradition upon his shoulders, now transferred to his children (to be transferred to their progeny, and so on)” (2008: 77–78). According to Edelman, “The future is kid stuff.”5 Perhaps Proverbs is kid stuff too, as identity gets elided in service to the figural Child, or to a past one is condemned to replicate as one’s future. Which might mean that the absence of children in The Sweet Hereafter, the evacuation of futurity in the service of the present, could be read as a (queer?) response of sorts to Wisdom, or at least to much of Proverbs. In an interview about the film, Atom Egoyan—channeling Whitney Houston—suggests that the children are the future. “I mean, the bus is obviously something which transports this community, and the future of this community,” he says. “I really do believe that children represent the future, and so every morning, the future of this community is transported in this bus” (in Morris 2010: 97). And although he never puts it this way, perhaps one of the reasons he decided to work with Russell Banks’s novel is that the book also shares this view. Banks has Dolores, the bus driver, remark that “a town needs its children, just as much and in the same ways as a family does. It comes undone without them, turns a community into a windblown scattering of isolated individuals”; the accident, she notes, “had busted apart the structures on which” the community “had depended. . . . A town needs its children for a lot more than it thinks” (Banks 1991: 235–37). Generally, the film explores the structural function of children more subtly than does Dolores’s analysis in the novel. One exception is a scene in which the lawyer, Mitchell Stephens, confronts Billy Ansel, at Billy’s garage, where the wrecked bus was deposited after the accident. The confrontation leads Stephens into a haunting confession of sorts. “We’ve all lost our children, Mr. Ansel,” Stephens practically keens, “they’re dead to us. They kill each other in the streets. They wander comatose in shopping malls. They’re paralyzed in front of televisions. Something terrible has happened that’s taken our children away. It’s too late. They’re gone.”6 The “something terrible” that “has happened [and] taken our children away” is linked, in the novel, to recent American cultural politics: Vietnam, drugs, TV, divorce, “the sexual colonization of kids by industry” (Banks 1991: 99)—a grab bag of relatively but not exclusively conservative targets; the conservatism is heard mostly in the lament for an erstwhile American greatness. But in the film, Stephens articulates a much vaguer sense of menace, while the haunting echoes of the accident mingle with the eerie Mychael Danna soundtrack (featuring distant guitar feedback), and while the ruined bus hulks nearby in the cold darkness. According to the metonymic logic, then, the bus wreckage is the future in ruins, so that this scene brings a great poignancy to the lived experience of futurity, or in Edelman’s terms of heteronormative reproductive futurity. Given the nature of the film’s plot, it is obviously not a leap for Mary Ann Beavis to think of characters from the film in Joban terms. Job also loses his children, of course, and his comforters seem to mock the wreckage of his earthly futurity with insulting piety. One of the problems with Beavis’s analysis, however, is that it is limited to seeing Mitchell Stephens and his clients in the role of Job’s friends, trying to ferret out guilt in order to explain the tragedy. These people are, in her words, “cast[ing] about for a



“Sooner Murder an Infant in Its Cradle”

201

way to control the uncontrollable; by seeking to ‘punish’ the bus company or the school board with a lawsuit, they try to restore ‘justice’ and equilibrium to their lives” (2001: par. 16). Surely there is a way this analysis can play with Edelman’s use of the drive. But it is also not quite true that Mitchell Stephens’s class action suit has to do only with the traditional pious Wisdom of the sages of Proverbs, and of Job’s friends (that virtue is or should be rewarded and folly or crime punished). For Stephens, unlike Job’s friends, does not blame the victim. He is aware that a jury might, of course—which is why he tries to determine early on which parents are morally upstanding. In fact, one of the first scenes with Stephens in Sam Dent features his interview with the Walkers, who provide for him a catalog of problematic local personalities to aid in his search for “good, upstanding” parents. In my view, Stephens is perhaps at his most Joban in the scene with Billy at the garage. He is a Job who mournfully channels his friends’ dire predictions—about God storing up “iniquity” for children (21:19); about children being “far from safety,” crushed without a deliverer (5:4); about children born for the sword and starvation (27:14). Job 14, which, also like the filmic scene, ponders, albeit hopelessly, the idea of resurrection (14:7, 14–15), includes a rare affirmation. It is possible that “children come to honor,” Job states, but then continues: the parents destroyed cruelly by God “do not know it” (14:21). The situation is reversed in Sam Dent. The parents must live on, knowing full well that their children did not come to honor. But they are also like the parents to whom Job alludes in that the loss of their children renders the future, their own future, moot. In Beavis’s essay, Billy Ansel is a Job as well, but also Ecclesiastes.7 “Like Qohelet,” Beavis argues, Billy “recognizes no discernible moral pattern”—and she cites Ecclesiastes here to the effect that: good is not invariably rewarded (3:16-20; 7:15); the same end comes to all (3:19-20); and all that results from human effort is bitterness (6:2-3). She then goes on to claim that “from Billy’s perspective, ‘salvation’ (healing) for the town will not come out of a futile quest for ‘justice’, but by people ‘coming to their senses’, getting their mourning over with and resuming their lives, rather than wallowing in their pain: ‘There is nothing better for a man [than] that he should eat and drink, and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God’ (Eccl. 2:24)” (2001: par. 17). One of the flaws in Beavis’s analysis at moments like this is that she more or less indiscriminately shifts between the novel and the film as though they were identical texts. It is true that the Billy of the novel becomes rather dissolute in his suffering. Obviously he drinks and carouses not simply to “enjoy his toil” but to forget, but at least there is a tangential relevance to Beavis’s interpretation. In the film, though, he is rather a different person. He does want the community to “come to its senses,” yes, but his sentiment is neither as tactless as Beavis implies, nor, I think, as uncritical. In another scene, for instance, Billy visits the Burnells, the parents of Nichole, hoping to get them to drop their suit: “I’ll help pay for Nichole, if that’s what you’re really talking about. I’ll even give you the money I got for my kids. That’s what we used to do, remember? Help each other. This was a community.” Not is, was. Billy is not clinging to the idea that that community will return; the past tense, given his tone, seems definitive. Nevertheless, he wagers with this visit that the people of Sam Dent

202

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

might once again collaborate for mutual benefit, even after community, or their prior concept of it, has vanished. It is actually Sam who, in the film, approximates Billy’s words from the novel. In the book Billy complains to the Burnells that the lawsuit is preventing people from mourning properly and getting on with their lives. Because of the suit and its emotional, psychological consequences, Billy says, “this has become a hateful place to live” (Banks 1991: 196). But in the film, clearly, it is Sam who gives voice to a version of this sentiment, actually manifesting the hateful nature of the town in his defensive and heartless parting shot at Billy: “We’re getting on with our lives, Billy. Maybe it’s time you got on with yours.” And, curiously, that hatefulness is produced precisely by the one set of parents still bound to the future through their children. Despite my criticism of Beavis, Ecclesiastes is an interesting conversation partner here, especially if Edelman’s No Future is kept in the mix. One of Qohelet’s most persistent refrains, after all, is that the future is unknowable, and therefore ought not to be an object of human interest (e.g., 6:12; 7:14; 8:7; 10:14). And investing in children as reliable heirs to the present is understood to be “vanity and a great evil,” or so I might construe 2:21—“sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it,” or at least by another whose sagacity is not a safe bet (2:19). The JPS translation of 11:8 perhaps sums it up best: “The only future is nothingness.” But if, as the Emily Dickinson poem Banks cites as his novel’s epigraph has it, “‘Nothing’ is the force/That renovates the World,”8 then perhaps Qohelet’s pessimism can be put to good use in this connection. Lee Edelman does not reference Ecclesiastes; but Ken Stone suggests what a reading of Qohelet inspired by Edelman might look like. Stone, discussing Qohelet’s embrace of food, drink, and sexual companionship in Ecclesiastes 9, indicates that were one seeking a biblical mandate for progressive and queer politics, “the importance placed here on food and drink could be used to argue . . . that, as God wants all of us to enjoy food and drink, political work for justice that ensures food and drink for everyone ought logically to be implied by Qohelet’s recommendation”; and the same goes, he says, for Qohelet’s recommendation that all should be able “to enjoy sexual pleasures” (2005: 141).9 Ultimately, though, and this is what more specifically aligns Stone and Edelman, Stone argues that without considering political futures, Qohelet “urges us simply to enjoy the bodily pleasures of food, drink and sex as the best thing which we can do” during our ephemeral earthly existence (2005: 141). And this, in turn, is one reason Stone considers Qohelet to be a queer text, because of its “positive emphasis on bodily pleasure” (2005: 145). No Future deploys jouissance as a counter-normative principle capable of undoing the constructions and exclusions of futurity, of the political. So too, Qohelet, in Stone’s reading, does not sublimate bodily “pleasures by making them vehicles for some other, presumably higher, religious goal” (2005: 145). And this returns us to Billy, and ultimately Nichole. Billy may not be, or not in any uncomplicated way, a Qohelet-like advocate of immediate pleasures, but his rejection of the lawsuit aims similarly at short-circuiting the only apparently ineluctable sense of continuity professed by the pious sages of Proverbs and the citizens of Sam Dent alike. The figure of the child as the community’s future haunts the litigious desires of the families Mitchell Stephens brings onboard. Knowing full well that they cannot be



“Sooner Murder an Infant in Its Cradle”

203

made whole, they nevertheless want precisely that, restoration, because the thought of living with no future is still, to them, an impossible thought. Billy is just about the only one who knows, or almost knows, that their now future-less community, is and can be something other than “kid stuff.” But by the end of the film, Nichole Burnell also comes to share the “queer” perspective on life in Sam Dent. And like Billy, Nichole acquires her knowledge at a price. She is the only survivor of the accident. She is paralyzed. And she is the victim of her father’s sexual abuse. The way that abuse is depicted is the source of much of the tension in the film. Something viewers notice immediately is that Nichole’s relationship with her father is, at least for the first few minutes they are onscreen together, before we know who they are, indistinguishable from a romantic one. Later in the film, there is a scene in the family barn in which Nichole, who appears to be a promising young musician, climbs up into the loft with her father, where they both lie down amid bundles of straw, candles aglow all around them. The camera pans away as they begin to kiss. Egoyan has said that he wanted to render a more complex situation in this depiction of incest than Banks had done in the novel. The problem with this is that the incest seems almost “accidental” as a result, an agentless romance that accidentally “blurs familial boundaries” (Boyd 2007: 285). On the other hand, Egoyan believes it is precisely by investing the scenes of Sam and Nichole together with romance, indeed with a kind of obviously clichéd aura of fantasy (Boyd 2007: 284), that he is able more realistically to depict Nichole’s perspective, the psychological and emotional defenses she needs in order to cope with her experience. Melanie Boyd, a scholar working on representations of incest, argues that Nichole’s own narrative agency, implicit in these scenes with her father, enables her eventually to turn the tables in “a traumatic repetition of sorts” (2007: 290). When later in her deposition she lies about the accident, implying that it was no accident at all, she is recognizing and indirectly, but publicly, asserting her father’s non-accidental culpability for the incest. Boyd concludes her study of the film by applauding this move, because it “measures the horror of incest on a scale not calibrated with female devastation” (2007: 291). Boyd’s reading is appealing, even though it has a shortcoming: Nichole, because of her injury, is still forced to rely upon, indeed to a greater degree than ever before, her father’s physical presence. Scenes of her in the house after the accident make that experience seem exquisitely painful. But in a way, that is a minor issue, compared with mine. I am still left with the problem of reading this film’s rendering of incest in terms of a jouissance that functions to undo the logic of reproductive futurism. Or let me put it more bluntly: in No Future, Edelman famously spits out an angry “fuck . . . the Child.” The sentence in question actually reads: “Fuck the social order and the Child in whose name we’re collectively terrorized” (Edelman 2004: 29). In juxtaposition with Nichole’s experience in the film, Edelman’s rhetoric can make one feel rather queasy. In this last section I am going to continue to draw upon Edelman in order to discuss the film’s remarkable penultimate scene, but I will conclude by referring to Edelman’s critics as a way of changing the framework somewhat, and ideally escaping some of the problems of Edelman’s tone and analyses. Nichole’s plot line in the film begins with preparations underway for a town fair. And the last moment in her story is a flashback to the night before the accident. We see

204

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Nichole, who has been babysitting Billy Ansel’s kids, finishing their bedtime story, or poem—Robert Browning’s “The Pied Piper.” “The Pied Piper” is not original to Banks’s novel, and Egoyan’s use of the poem throughout the film, in Nichole’s voiceover, is really a stroke of genius, drawing a line under the theme of childlessness as negation of futurity. The poem also helps to unify Nichole’s two traumas. The film ends with the children sleeping, and Nichole standing before a window as a car comes up the drive, capturing her in a blaze of light. But the penultimate scene continues with the Browning poem from earlier in the film, interrupted by some improvised additional verses: As you see her, two years later, I wonder if you realize something. I wonder if you understand that all of us, Dolores, me, the children who survived, the children who didn’t, that we’re all citizens of a different town now; a place with its own special rules, and its own special laws. A town of people living in the sweet hereafter . . . “Where waters gushed, and fruit trees grew, And flowers put forth a fairer hue, And everything was strange and new.”10

In Browning’s poem these last lines are spoken by the lame boy who was too slow to follow his friends through the “wondrous portal” in the mountainside where the Pied Piper led them (XIII.226–27). Earlier in the film, but still on the eve of the tragedy, just after we see her reading part of the poem to Billy’s kids, we watch her father lead her into the barn behind their home for the scene of manipulative, abusive seduction described above. In this moment, she continues reading the poem in voiceover, and we understand that she is the lame child already, “bereft/of all the pleasant sights” her “playmates” see (XIII.238–39). We also understand that, from another perspective, she is alone in being lured by the Pied Piper, her father Sam, while her friends experience something more akin to a regular childhood. Then at the end of the film, the voiceover picks up again as various other plot lines are brought to a conclusion. We see Mitchell Stephens encountering Dolores, after the suit was dropped. She has now taken a job as a shuttle bus driver at the airport. After Dolores and Stephens, we see Billy Ansel as the bus is taken away from his garage on a wrecker, and, finally, Nichole at the fair, sitting under a ride, probably in her wheelchair (see Figure 16.1). In these interpolated lines, Nichole refers to other survivors, plural. The screenplay has Dolores say that “all the children of my town” were killed. In the same scene in the novel, she merely refers to “the children of my town” (Banks 1991: 35) and the narrative makes clear that several, in fact, survived. Obviously, even in the film, “all the children” is an exaggeration. Nichole survived the accident and her sister Jenny had not even been on the bus, having stayed home from school that day. In the novel, Nichole has a sister and two brothers, all still alive. These discrepancies remind us, tangentially, that the queer rejection of the figural Child is always predicated on the knowledge that all sorts of “actual, flesh and blood children” (Edelman 2004: 49), not to mention “the adults that some children become” (2004: 29), are excluded from the benefits that accrue to the proper constituents of this or that political future.



“Sooner Murder an Infant in Its Cradle”

205

Figure 16.1  Nichole’s half-smile in The Sweet Hereafter (1997). Everyone, Nichole says, the whole town, now lives in “the sweet hereafter,” “where everything is strange and new.” That last line, which comes from Browning again, is repeated as we see Nichole seated, a sly half-smile on her lips, and the ride circling above her, across which the camera pans before the cut. In the sweet hereafter of Sam Dent, everything is strange and new. One might be tempted by the semi-ethereal, Monalisa-esque smile, and the shot of the blue evening sky, to think of life in the beyond, but that would be to reinstate the fantasy of futurity after the future has been lost. Instead, the strangeness and newness of the present is the sweet hereafter. Much as Billy Ansel does when he seems to refer to the present community in the past tense, Nichole suggests a temporal disorientation or dislocation, or perhaps a collapsing of time altogether—in the sweet hereafter, which is where the people of the town now live, “everything was strange and new.” Or: the future was now. The strangeness and newness, I would argue, and the curious pleasure it elicits in Nichole, derive from the same source as Edelman’s jouissance. The work of jouissance, or of queerness figuring the social order’s death drive, “reduc[es] the assurance of meaning in fantasy’s promise of continuity to the meaningless circulations and repetitions of the drive” (2004: 39). The carnival ride, spinning and spinning above Nichole’s smile, while ever so faintly in the background one can hear the screaming of horrified children, is a perfect filmic depiction of Edelman’s Lacanian logic. Of course, Nichole may have hopes for her own future. She may want to grow up and marry and have children. The film does not provide any evidence of this. But because it is nevertheless not an intention that I would want to deny her, and also because it is simply a little difficult to talk about a child, or at least a young woman, embracing, queerly, the death of the figural Child, not to mention Edelman’s queer jouissance, I am inclined to turn, at the end of this discussion, from Edelman to a few of his critics. Although I think her arguments against Edelman might sometimes be lacking, it is hard to gainsay Sarah Ahmed’s most basic rebuttal to No Future, that even if the optimism of heteronormative teleologies needs to be undone, “pessimism is not an adequate defense against things happening” (Ahmed 2010: 179).11 Like Edelman she worries that “the very expectation of happiness gives us a specific image of the

206

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

future,” which can produce a sense of alienation among those for whom that happy future is simply unappealing (2010: 29). Such people become “affect aliens” (e.g., 2010: 49) especially insofar as they construct alternatives out of their oblique relation to dominant norms of happiness. Queer pessimists like Edelman, she says, are affect aliens, refusing to find the logic of reproductive futurity or the image of the Child in any way satisfying (2010: 162). It is obvious that that image of Nichole at the fair contrasts vividly with the expressions on Dolores, Mitchell Stephens, and Billy Ansel’s faces at the end of the film. Their pain and bewilderment are all-too-evident and entirely understandable. But Nichole seems to feel differently, and to feel differently in a different time or temporality. In fact, it would seem that the hopefulness of the image of her at the fair has made affect alienation a “generative” force, in Ahmed’s words, so much so that the other characters risk appearing hopelessly melancholic in contrast. Without trying to pin down the emotional or conceptual content of Nichole’s sly pleasure, here, we can nevertheless, by drawing upon Ahmed’s work, acknowledge the affirmation, rather than the rejection and negation of “the death drive,” implicit in Nichole’s subversively strange and new world. Judith Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure also critiques Edelman while providing an alternative antisocial framework for thinking about Nichole. Halberstam privileges a certain idea of failure in order to disrupt “the temporality of success” (2011: 92), for her work, like Ahmed’s, understands success, or the happy future, in terms of “punishing norms that discipline behavior and manage human development” in the present (2011: 3). Perhaps most interestingly for our purposes, one of her goals is to restore “some of the wondrous anarchy of childhood and [disturb] the supposedly clean boundaries between adults and children, winners and losers” (2011: 3). Seeing Nichole in terms of the expectations of the children in audiences of the animated films she studies, Halberstam might applaud Nichole’s difference from adults like Billy, Stephens, and Dolores, who “demand sentiment, progress and closure”; “children” she says, “could care less,” they are “anarchic beings who partake in strange and inconsistent temporal logics” (2011: 119–20). Again, without overly restricting Nichole’s enigmatic meaning, we might conclude that she represents a kind of pleasure in the destabilization, or actually the destruction, of naturalizing mythologies of success. It is difficult to know what the “Nothing” that renovates the novel’s world would be. Maybe that is Banks’s ironic point in his choice of epigraph? The way he closes the novel is also highly evocative. Sometime after the accident, Dolores drives her disabled husband Abbott home from the fairgrounds, watching the roadside: I began to see the eyes of animals suddenly flash and glitter as I passed along the way, reflecting my headlights back at me and then as quickly flaring out. For a brief second, though, their eyes were pure white and flat, like dry, coldly glowing disks, and it was as if the animals had all come to the edge of the forest, and there by the side of the road they had waited and watched for me, until I had passed them by and the safe familiar darkness had returned. (Banks 1991: 257)

At the start of the book, and in the film, Dolores describes the children she picked up when driving the bus as “berries waiting to be plucked,” and she was out there picking,



“Sooner Murder an Infant in Its Cradle”

207

or plucking them up, “clearing the hillside of its children” (1991: 18). Those berrychildren return at the end of the novel as menacing animals, watching and waiting in the darkness for her. The metamorphosis of the children from delightful and colorful little berries to frightening animals of the dark forest is part of the community’s selfdiscovery. In a way, you could say that the children are still there on the hillsides. Dolores still sees them. She just sees them differently. It is as if she had suddenly learned the lesson of Eccl. 3:18, that what had seemed utterly natural as the rational order of things, the rhythms of their lives, what Stephens in the novel calls their “ongoing relation to time” (1991: 118), time as order and as sense, may always have been a misrecognition of who they were and how their world worked. Dolores is swallowed up by darkness, and only that nothingness can provide her with a sense of safety sufficient, perhaps, for renovation. And I think we might say something similar about Nichole at the conclusion of Egoyan’s film. Whether or not she is a “failure” in any sense (thinking once again of Halberstam’s title) is perhaps another question, but it is a question that returns us, at the end, to critical countervoices in the Wisdom texts as well. To Ecclesiastes, who in the persona of the king finds that failure or folly always invalidates fantasies of success. Or perhaps even more appropriately to Agur of Proverbs 30, who mocks the displacement of Wisdom into heaven, the beyond, the sweet hereafter, and calls out instead for “the food that I need” (30:8) now, disrupting the grand cosmic scheme of the sages in favor of the drive. Nichole’s eerie smile reminds us that not even Proverbs can proffer the promise of sagacious happiness successfully, with a completely straight face.

Notes 1 This proto-Nietzschean verse says that stifling desire is like murder. The analogy to infanticide is too much for some critics. Richard Cronin, for instance, claims that the verse reveals “the antinomian as psychopath” (2000: 54). Geoffrey Hartman, perhaps more willing to play along, nevertheless notices the line’s “libidinal anger” in a broader discussion of hate speech and genocide (2004: 356). Intriguingly, literary historians have shown that Blake may have been targeting reactionary British sentiment in the wake of the French Revolution. At least, “the figure of infanticide is common in counter-revolutionary imagery as a motif of social disorder” (McDonagh 2003: 81). Others claim Blake was rejecting a Lockean educational paradigm. According to Locke, “Children should be used to submit their desires and go without their longings even from their very cradles. The very first thing they should learn to know should be, that they were not to have any thing, because it pleased them, but because it was thought fit for them” (quoted in Farrell 2006: 311; Locke 1693: 38). Combining these readings, we might conclude that Blake’s line affirms the pedagogical value of desire’s capacity to rupture the social fabric. 2 But instead of simply queer he uses the Lacanian-esque neologism: “sinthomosexuals.” 3 The child as tombstone in this context is akin to what Edelman has more recently called “our [own] mortified, adorablized selves in their conformity to the dominant ethics of happiness and immobilized social forms” (Berlant and Edelman 2014: 19). 4 I cite the NRSV, unless otherwise noted. 5 The title of No Future’s first chapter.

208

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

6 I cannot explore here the significant subplot concerning Stephens’s own drugaddicted daughter, and his attempt to come to grips with her (and his own) lost futures. 7 Beavis seems to find him Joban because he refuses “any comforting ‘explanations’ of the accident,” finding it simply an accident without explanation (2001: par. 17). But Job does not think his suffering an accident and demands an explanation. Another problem is that, in the end, Job gets his children back, new and improved, as it were (Job 42:16-17). I am not sure, then, that the Joban parallels are all that constructive. 8 Poem #1563, in the Johnson edition (Dickinson 1960: 650) cited by Banks. 9 While the passage (Eccl. 9:9) Stone is thinking of directly concerns heterosexual pleasure, Stone’s focus is on sexual pleasure, not marriage and childrearing. Further, Qohelet’s references to companionship are limited to “male categories” (e.g., 4:9) (Stone 2005: 140–41). 10 Section XIII.242–44, with line 244 repeated. See Browning (1993: 16). 11 Still, there is a tension between her sense that hope is about discovering desire in the present (Ahmed 2010: 182) and yet also about keeping the future “open as the possibility of things not staying as they are, or being as they stay” (2010: 179). It is as difficult, that is, to imagine an open, content-less future, as it is to keep our pictures of the future from acting upon the way we might police our community boundaries in the present. Additionally, Edelman’s Hamlet article exposes the (Derridean) messianic optimism for the future as a sleight-of-hand; one might be open to the future, but one is always open to justice, peace, harmony, and so on. For Edelman this merely forecloses the undecidability of the only ostensibly open future, establishes “a conservative rhetoric of futurism over real openness to an event” (Edelman 2011: 162).

Works cited Ahmed, Sara (2010), The Promise of Happiness, Durham: Duke University Press. Banks, Russell (1991), The Sweet Hereafter, New York: HarperCollins. Beavis, Mary Ann (2001), “The Sweet Hereafter: Law, Wisdom and Family Revisited,” Journal of Religion & Film, 5 (1): art. 2. Available online: http://digitalcommons. unomaha.edu/jrf/vol5/iss1/2/ (accessed December 12, 2016). Berlant, Lauren, and Lee Edelman (2014), Sex, or the Unbearable, Durham: Duke University Press. Boyd, Melanie (2007), “To Blame Her Sadness: Representing Incest in Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter,” in Jennifer Lise Burwell and Monique Tschofen (eds.), Image and Territory: Essays on Atom Egoyan, 274–94, Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Brown, William P. (2008), “To Discipline without Destruction: The Multifaceted Profile of the Child in Proverbs,” in Terence E. Fretheim and Beverly Roberts Gaventa (eds.), The Child in the Bible, 63–81, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Browning, Robert (1993), My Last Duchess and Other Poems, Shane Weller (ed.), New York: Dover. Cronin, Richard (2000), The Politics of Romantic Poetry: In Search of the Pure Commonwealth, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Dickinson, Emily (1960), The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), Boston: Little, Brown. Edelman, Lee (2004), No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Durham: Duke University Press.



“Sooner Murder an Infant in Its Cradle”

209

Edelman, Lee (2011), “Against Survival: Queerness in a Time That’s Out of Joint,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 62 (2): 148–69. Farrell, Michael (2006), “John Locke’s Ideology of Education and William Blake’s ‘Proverbs of Hell’,” Notes and Queries, 53 (3): 310–11. Halberstam, Judith (2011), The Queer Art of Failure, Durham: Duke University Press. Hartman, Geoffrey (2004), “The Reinvention of Hate,” in Geoffrey Hartman and Daniel T. O’Hara (eds.), The Geoffrey Hartman Reader, 355–64, New York: Fordham. Locke, John (1693), Some Thoughts Concerning Education, London: A & J Churchill. McDonagh, Josephine (2003), Child Murder and British Culture, 1720-1900, New York: Cambridge University Press. Morris, T. J. (2010), Atom Egoyan: Interviews, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Stone, Ken (2005), Practicing Safer Texts: Food, Sex and Bible in Queer Perspective, New York: T&T Clark. Waltke, Bruce K. (2005), The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 15-31, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

17

Son of Man: A Case Study in Translation, Postcolonialism, and Biblical Film Hugh S. Pyper

The South African film Son of Man (Jezile 2006) stands out among Jesus films. It is one of the very few films in which Jesus is portrayed by a black actor, and it is unique in setting his story in a fictional but contemporary African country riven by civil war.1 It is also one of the few films with dialogues almost entirely in an African language (in this case, Xhosa, one of South Africa’s eleven official languages and spoken by around nine million people) to receive international recognition. Son of Man has won considerable praise at film festivals, winning “Best Picture” at the L.A. Pan African film festival and being nominated for the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. It has also received attention from biblical scholars, in a volume of collected essays by African and non-African scholars (Walsh, Staley, and Reinhartz 2013) and in a number of interesting individual essays.2 In what follows, my debt to these is clear. My acquaintance with Son of Man came as I was looking for resources for a course I taught on “Postcolonialism and the Bible” at the University of Sheffield. Here was a film that placed Jesus’s story in the context of the struggles for independence and social justice in a small African country called Judea. In the process, it invites reflection on the parallels between the political context of the emerging Jesus movement in Romanoccupied Palestine and the world we inhabit. Son of Man raises explicitly a number of questions often ignored or concealed in an attempt to combine the Bible and film. These questions boil down to the question of translation’s possibilities and limits. Looked at another way, this is the question of what it means to read. All communication involves interpreting signs provided by the other, but these signs are embedded in a coded system, a language, which means that to decipher one sign we need to know how it stands in relation to the range of possible signs and the rules of combination that constitute the other’s language. These problems are compounded by the differences in power and status between members of different cultures and within any culture. The experience of colonialism and its aftermath adds further layers of complexity, leading to the distinctiveness of postcolonial reading. Postcolonialism is notoriously difficult to define, especially if we want to extend the concept to embrace an ancient text like the Bible as well as contemporary film. What I mean by a postcolonial reading is one predicated on the co-implication of three factors



Translation, Postcolonialism, and Biblical Film

211

in any postcolonial situation: language, identity, and power. Postcolonialism’s paradox is that the powerless can reassert their distinctive identity only in the language of the powerful. They always implicitly answer the questions the powerful have addressed to them. Those who hold power determine the very criteria of identity. At the same time, the powerful discover that their power depends on those they dominate, and their own language and identity change. This leads on both sides to what Homi Bhabha has described as “hybridity,” the emergence of new identities out of the very processes that are ostensibly designed to assert and reinforce existing identities (1994). In order to communicate with the other in their language, translation is inevitable. The act of translation, however, changes both the source and target languages. Translation theory has been riven with disputes over translation’s “foreignness,” which can be staged as a clash between the approaches of Eugene Nida and Lawrence Venuti (see Shureteh 2015). Nida is best known for biblical translation, where he advocates “dynamic” or “functional equivalence” where the goal is to give the reader of the translation an equivalent experience to the reader of the source. The paradox is that the reader of the source is not reading a translated text. That fundamental difference in the experience cannot be erased, but only concealed, and the text’s translatedness hidden. Venuti polemicizes against this practice arguing that the translator needs to highlight the translated text’s foreignness. Nida’s approach leads to the text’s illicit domestication, rendering the foreign familiar. Venuti pleads for transparency, not in terms of some intrinsic meaning common both to the source and the target audiences, but over the translation process that resists the assimilation of the source language into the target language’s cultural paradigms. Instead, unfamiliar metaphors, vocabulary, and syntax stretch the target language. Yet taken to its extreme, Venuti’s notion makes translation practically impossible and questions the possibility of ever reading a foreign text as native speakers would. Venuti’s understandable resistance to the assimilation under Nida’s model may lead to an irreducible alienation of the text. The relevance of this to the reading of texts in postcolonial situations is clear. The paradox of translation, pitched between two extreme positions rendering translation either invisible or impossible, maps onto the paradox that hybridity is the consequence of trying to assert identity. In working creatively with this tension, the Antillean poet and postcolonial theorist Édouard Glissant championed opacité (see [1990] 1997). Briefly, he defended the status of the Creole language of his native Martinique in the face of suppression and denigration by the French-speaking elite. He argued Creole was not a botched attempt to speak French, but a creative strategy to maintain identity by shaping a way for slaves to communicate without their masters understanding them. He argues that the typically French endorsement of enlightenment, clarity, and transparency imposes a European view of the world under the guise of a universal humanism. In this sense the attempt to understand the other also attempts to domesticate the other and to impose a new identity. Opacité is the right not to be understood, to remain “opaque” to the other, and thereby to maintain one’s distinctive identity. Furthermore, the dispute over translation, and thus over transparency versus opacity, is historically framed around the Bible’s translation and the indisputable role

212

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

of biblical translations in the shaping of colonial language and identity. The Christian Bible is itself witness to translation between Hebrew and Greek and between the languages of the powerful and the powerless. It is itself intrinsically hybrid. Any biblical film is therefore caught up already in hybridity, as well as in the tension between the familiar and the strange. It is the result of a complex matrix of acts of translation. It is not only the film’s dialogue that raises translation issues; the film’s visual language also depends on the interpretation of objects, places, and gestures in terms of a set of culturally molded schemata. Son of Man is an exceptionally self-conscious example of such a hybrid product. Moreover, it foregrounds and conceals different dimensions of its hybridity. It thus becomes a fascinating test case about how to read such hybrid artifacts—a significant enterprise if we acknowledge that any cultural artifact is inevitably somewhat hybrid. Biblical scholars can bring their awareness of such translation issues to the criticism of a film like Son of Man. Taking a leaf out of biblical scholars’ typical procedure, I will hone in on the first few minutes of Son of Man to demonstrate in microcosm the way in which the complex issues of cultural and linguistic hybridity shapes and complicates a viewer’s reading of the film (using the 2008 Spier DVD).

Son of Man: Opening credits The first image is the standard introductory sequence for Spier films. The camera zooms in through an animation of drifting dandelion seeds to focus on bulrushes at the edge of a pond, with background birdsong. A golden statuette of a crowned woman rises from the water. Screens follow naming the film’s sponsors. The soundtrack changes to evoke a beach: we hear waves breaking, gulls crying, and an intensifying wind. The next image is the first that refers to something outside the normal expectations of an English-speaking audience. The screen reads “Present a Dimpho di Kopane Film.” “Dimpho di Kopane” is a Sesotho phrase that could be translated as “Combined Talents” and is the name given to the multicultural theater company set up by the British-born theater and film director, Mark Dornford-May. He co-wrote and produced the film, but his name does not appear in these opening credits in accord with his insistence that the company’s performances are a creative collaboration. The sequence’s final shot is the film’s title in stark white letters against a black background: “Son of Man.” Such an opening sequence is what an audience would expect, but this reminds us of the conventions in any film presentation. There are, however, some unusual features here. There is no music; the wind’s bleak sounds by the sea point beyond the credits to the opening scene, perhaps playing on the audience’s mild impatience as the formalities of acknowledging the sponsors are gone through. Some might register the absence of a producer or director’s name and the presence of a language other than English in the company’s name is also noticeable. That point, however, reinforces the observation that Son of Man’s hybridity extends to its presentation. Its paratext, to use Gerard Genette’s term (1997), all the information that surrounds the film such as the title, the title pages, credits, the additional content included on the DVD release, and the film’s packaging and



Translation, Postcolonialism, and Biblical Film

213

advertising, is in English. The film’s subtitles are in English, and appear integrally in the DVD; there is no option to turn off the subtitles.3 English therefore encompasses the film. The subtitles, however, make the English-speaking audience a reader as much as a hearer and any audience becomes aware of one level where there is a continual process of translation. In this connection, it occurs to me as an English-speaking viewer to wonder what difference it would make if these paratextual elements were in Xhosa. What if the title of the film were “Nyana womntu,” the Xhosa equivalent? What effect would that have on who might opt to watch and what they might be expecting as they watch? Why is there no translation of this title in Xhosa at any point? As an English-speaking viewer, I am confronted with an issue of translation marked by lack: either its absence or its invisibility. For whatever reason, there is no Xhosa in the paratext. Such a line of thinking also makes me aware of my ignorance of Xhosa culture in circumstances where I am being invited, or indeed obliged, to look at this story through Xhosa eyes and ears. I am not aware of any extensive work on the film’s reception by Xhosa-speaking audiences, so in what follows I am all too conscious that I may be projecting my own questions.4 Having no first-hand knowledge of Xhosa culture, I am left projecting what I imagine a Xhosa-speaking audience would experience from such a film, backed up with what evidence I can muster. As such, I must apologize to any Xhosa-speaking reader and to those who have direct experience of Xhosa culture. I can only hope that a sympathetic outsider’s misreadings may make more plain the prejudices and errors that beset the perception of Xhosa culture and may suggest ways in which others may need to be educated. It should go without saying that that places no obligation on anyone to provide that education. Indeed, Glissant’s notion of opacité champions the right of any not to be understood by others. To say that is not to endorse ignorance, willful misunderstanding, or lazy stereotyping.

Where credit is due Before embarking on the reading of the film, however, it is instructive to look more closely at the opening credits, an aspect which audiences of any language are likely to pass over as a necessary evil. As we have seen, the credits begin with a listing of sponsors of the film: Spier Films, the production company, the Department of Trade and Industry of the United Kingdom, Nando’s Arts and Film and Music Entertainment Ltd. Apart from the British government, all the companies are part of the considerable holdings of the South African billionaire Dick Enthoven who also owns major insurance companies and hotel chains. Rather surprisingly to many Britons, given the popularity of the Nando’s restaurant chain, the company began in South Africa, selling Mozambican food, and then was taken over by Enthoven. It still markets itself as a family business as Enthoven enterprises are run by family members. The Nando name is, for those who notice it, a kind of defamiliarization through familiarity. We come across a familiar name in an unexpected context.

214

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Mark Donford-May tells us that it was Enthoven’s initiative that first led him to South Africa. A member of the South African parliament in the 1970s, Enthoven opposed the government’s apartheid policies on economic and ethical grounds. Having built up his business empire, he became a major sponsor for South African artists and set up Spier films, named after his estate near Stellenbosch, to provide funding for local projects.5 His management of the estate itself was driven by his wider concern for the restoration of equity in a society distorted by social engineering. Accordingly, he gave farm laborers a stake in the estate’s farming enterprises and built an off-site eco-village where he encouraged workers of all races and social classes to settle. One of his sons is reported describing the reasoning behind the company’s involvement in such enterprises as follows: “Our view is not purely altruistic. .  .  . Economic imperatives are driving it and economics relies on social sustainability” (Visser 2013: 71). Enthoven is keen to promote a new South Africa where tensions over race and ethnicity would not be barriers to the maintenance of social stability. Dornford-May and his musical colleague seem to have come to Enthoven’s attention because of their work in community theater in London’s East End. The company they formed, Broomhill Opera, restored and revived a derelict former music hall and used it to work with local people on community projects. Before that, Dornford-May had considerable experience in the use of theater to promote social change. His experience of communal theater goes back to his childhood. His father was Drama Adviser to Cheshire County Council and as part of his remit was involved in the production of the revived Chester Mystery plays, a cycle of plays on key biblical incidents that dates from the thirteenth century. The plays were written and produced by the various guilds of workers in the city. Dornford-May took part in the plays himself as an angel. As a result of Enthoven’s invitation, Dornford-May set out to find a way to bring his experience of community theater to the situation in South Africa. He tapped into the vast network of community choirs and held auditions for more than two thousand people. The question then was, what work would they perform? The company was made up of men and women of many different social, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds in South Africa. What culture did they share? The answer he hit upon was the biblical story. It was familiar to people from a range of backgrounds yet belonged to none. Furthermore, the Chester Mystery plays were already an adaptation of the biblical story developed and performed by ordinary working people, often in the face of disapproval from the authorities. He first introduced this to the company in its original thirteenth-century English as this was a language that was strange for everyone, and yet recognizable as most of the cast spoke at least some English. Out of this developed a piece of musical theater called The Mysteries— Yiimimangaliso, which was performed with great success in South Africa and Britain, and indeed has been recently revived. It was staged with minimal props, using music and dance as well as the spoken word to carry the story. One original and striking feature was that the actors spoke their lines in their mother tongues for the most part: Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaans, and English dominated, but there was also Latin and Middle English as well. That audiences could nonetheless follow was a testimony to the actors’



Translation, Postcolonialism, and Biblical Film

215

communicative abilities as well as the fact that they could rely on at least some audience recognition of events. The reason for telling this story is that it explains the long process that preceded the decision to produce a Jesus film with a South African cast. Many of the cast of Son of Man appeared in The Mysteries, indeed often in the same roles. The reasons behind some of what seem the film’s most original aspects become easier to understand if one is familiar with the precursor. It also explains the film’s funding and the project’s rationale, at least in the eyes of Dick Enthoven. This does not question the film’s cinematic value. It simply reminds us that any film is a commercial enterprise and inescapably bound up in the economic and political system of international finance, itself subject to all the tensions and paradoxes of the postcolonial condition.

The opening scene So let us now turn, not a moment too soon, to the film’s opening scenes. Here I hope to imitate in some sense the work of the biblical commentator. This is easily parodied, and I do not deny a certain temptation in that direction, but it also provides a disciplined model of reading. The test is where it spills over from explanation to assimilation and how it deals with the text’s opacity. Does it seek to elide or to celebrate it? The first image is of a solitary locust on a rock. Already, the process of reading begins. Does the audience immediately identify the insect as a locust? Presuming that they do, that identification comes with cultural associations of overwhelming swarms and crop destruction. Here, though, cultural differences may come into play. Locusts are not part of a British audience’s environment and pose no immediate threat. They are something learned about at school or through the media. Locust swarms are a problem of the Middle East and Africa, something encountered on the news or in documentaries. For some proportion of the audience, the locust also evokes biblical resonances, in the Egyptian plagues and the prophetic writings particularly. The concentration on a single locust is important. It recalls the other filmic experience of Africa that British audiences will recognize: the wildlife documentary. For those who do have some knowledge of natural history, the solitude of this locust may carry further meaning. A lone locust poses little threat; it is when environmental factors trigger their swarming behavior that the danger to human societies presents itself. One locust, however, may be a harbinger of destruction. Is this locust then a warning that destruction is on its way? What might this locust mean to an African, or specifically South African or Xhosa audience? Again, all I can do here, and all I intend to do, is to try and articulate the kind of questions that occur to me as a Western viewer as I respond to the film and try to enter imaginatively into the experience of a viewer from another cultural background. I imagine, then, that the locust is recognizable as part of the locals’ everyday background. The threat that locusts pose to crops and livelihoods is continuing and real and there are living memories of devastating locust swarms at crucial periods in Xhosa history. At the same time, I have read that the locust is one of the animals associated with divination in Xhosa lore.

216

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

For a British viewer, the locust is a marker both of foreignness and of the biblical. For a Xhosa viewer, it marks a common ground between Xhosa and biblical experience. Alienation and assimilation pull in different directions in one image. The locust is highlighted in the foreground. The soundtrack records a couple of sharp bursts of its stridulations, a sound picked up at other points. In the background, are two blurred human figures. They are seated on a sand dune. All we can tell of the nearer figure is that it appears to be dark-skinned and wrapped in a white cloth. The camera then jumps to a full-facial head-shot of a young man with a shaved head who has what appears to be white clay applied to his face. He is looking pensively to the right of the camera. A British viewer may well identify him as African and perhaps recognize that the clay mask has some significance. For some such viewers, it will resonate, maybe uncomfortably, with the title of Frantz Fanon’s book Black Skin, White Masks ([1952] 1967), but quite what this signifies will not be clear.6 For a Xhosa viewer, the young man bears the distinctive marks of a participant in the male circumcision ritual, where adolescent youths are separated from their families and trained by the community elders in manhood’s responsibilities. The white mask and the white robe mark out a young man in a liminal state. This is made clearer later when more of this ceremony is shown in the context of the transition to manhood, but at this point, a British and a Xhosa viewer will read the scene differently.

Jesus speaks Xhosa As we look at the young man’s face, the soundtrack begins to incorporate an unsettling hiss of white noise. As the figure continues to stare off-camera, a voice speaks and the first English subtitle appears: “Jesus, turn these stones into bread.” The words recall the devil’s first temptation of Jesus in Lk. 4:3 or Mt. 4:3, but with significant omissions and alterations. Luke’s verse reads “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” The film’s script has no hypothetical clause. On the soundtrack, however, the English-speaking audience hears a phrase in an unfamiliar language. Not all would identify this as Xhosa, but the language’s characteristic sounds together with the film’s overall context indicate an African language at least. For English speakers, the film’s language has an unfamiliar foreignness that may remind English speakers of the oddity of the use of English in other biblical films, an act of defamiliarization of the language. In Son of Man, a biblically literate English-speaking audience will recognize familiar phrases in the subtitles as translations from the Xhosa. This has at least the potential of reminding such an audience that the English Bible is itself a translation.7 This may lead also to the acknowledgment that a Xhosa-speaking Jesus is no more strange than an English-speaking one. Yet to be confronted with a film in Xhosa is still disorienting. English’s status as a world language, but also a language associated with the colonial elite, makes questions of power and influence inescapable here. For those raised and educated in a system where English is the language of education and of government, that Jesus is presented as a Xhosa-speaker is a political message.



Translation, Postcolonialism, and Biblical Film

217

Yet it also reminds me that the same holds true for the all-too-familiar gospel texts. Even the Greek New Testaments I possess come with paratexts in languages other than Koine Greek and are in that sense hybrid texts. The lines between assimilation and alienation and the place of the opaque and that which is not understood in these texts lend themselves to this kind of analysis. The presence of Xhosa and the imperative to translate are examples of what Russian formalists know as ostranenie or “making strange,” which remind us just how strange the gospels themselves are. A Xhosa-speaking audience has no such problem, of course, but what is the effect of seeing a film with Xhosa dialogue on such an audience? There is a tradition of Xhosa language films into which Son of Man falls, but few of these films have been distributed internationally. Historically, the economics and politics of the South African film industry have meant that many of the films in Xhosa were made at the behest of the South African government and had strong underlying propaganda purposes. Most were made with very limited budgets and low production values.8 Son of Man therefore stands out in this context too as a Xhosa film with very high production values and a comparatively generous budget in local terms. How familiar would a Xhosa audience be with seeing such a film in their own language? Is this an act of familiarization or defamiliarization? For English speakers, it is hard to think of a comparable experience. It is simply taken for granted that the dialogue in films set all round the world and in all historical epochs will be in English, perhaps marked with a foreign accent, but not always even that. This applies to biblical films as well. No one would remark upon the fact that Jesus and his disciples speak in English in such a film. Mel Gibson’s Aramaic and Latin dialogue in The Passion of the Christ (2004) was a deliberate and remarkable act of defamiliarization for an English-speaking audience. Perhaps the nearest analogy for English speakers would be attending a production of an opera translated into English. One might think that English-speaking audiences would clamor for this, but many opera aficionados find the fact that the words the singers are uttering are understandable interferes with their enjoyment, or at any rate alters the experience for them. They are not used to being able to understand. Does this film offer a comparable experience for Xhosa film-goers whereby the fact that the language is familiar acts as a means of defamiliarizing the story? Even within South Africa, let alone the whole continent, only the relatively small proportion of people who understand Xhosa will have this experience. Granted, others who have some knowledge of the language or speak a related language such as Zulu will experience some of the effect. That is still a minority of the population of South Africa, let alone of Africa as a whole. For those who are not Xhosa speakers, the language’s distinctive phonetics, in particular the use of click consonants, render it recognizably African, but they cannot share the understanding of Xhosa speakers.

The contest for the world The figure we are watching turns his head with a quizzical expression to his right and we infer that he is turning toward the speaker. The camera angle changes to show us

218

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

two figures in profile sitting on a sand dune with the sea in the background. The nearer figure, seated slightly further up the dune, is the one we have already seen. He is seated on the ground, wrapped in a white cloth, barefooted, and with his left shoulder bare. His face and neck are caked with white clay. His left hand clasps his right wrist and in his right hand is a thin cane. For the British viewer, this new perspective adds little information that helps them to interpret what is going on. Gerald West, however, reports the observation of Luxolo Gqomfa, one of his Xhosa students, as they watched the film together. “But did you notice the colour of the fringe of the blanket that the circumcised Jesus wore?” (2013: 2). I had not even noticed that the blanket had a colored fringe until I read this question. The black fringe signifies that the initiate has passed through the circumcision ritual’s most painful and vulnerable part. In the early phases, the initiates wear blankets with red fringes. West explains that the white clay disguises the initiate from the gaze of women, including his own mother, and from malignant forces, to protect him. At this time this young man is particularly vulnerable to malign spirits. It is ironic, then, that he is under such close scrutiny from the camera. Seated beside him is another young man with his face turned toward the first. He has a long topknot of hair and is dressed entirely in black. He wears trousers and shoes and some kind of jacket. He too has a cane; planted in front of him is a stick topped with an animal’s hoof. He is holding out his right hand with two smooth stones to the first young man. The camera switches between the two faces and we see that the second has a large earring in his left ear and on his left cheek a tattoo of a striking snake. These cues as well as the implied biblical context suggest that this second young man represents Satan as tempter of Jesus. In terms of traditional Western iconography, there are a number of references that reinforce that identification and a number that are discordant with the tradition. Chief among the latter are the appearance and cultural background of the two young men. The two young men stare at each other; Jesus’s gaze drops to the stones and then returns to meet the other’s gaze with an expression of disdain. He gets up and leaves the frame, going out of focus, leaving the camera concentrating on Satan. He is still holding out the stones but follows the departing figure off-camera with his gaze. He lowers his hands, then violently smashes the stones together. The camera angle changes to show him from the right and foregrounds the cloven hoof of the goats-foot cane. The shot changes again to a view of Jesus from behind as he strides down the dunes toward the scene. The camera then pans up a cliff face to reveal Jesus and Satan standing together at the top. Satan speaks again: “Throw yourself off; God your father will protect you.” Again without answering, Jesus turns and walks away. We jump immediately to a shot of the two sitting together at the top of a dune, this time with Satan nearer to the camera. He raises his stick and points ahead of him and speaks once more, “I’ll give you this world if you worship me.” Jesus says nothing but purses his lips. Suddenly, he grabs Satan and pushes him backward down the dune. The camera follows Satan as he tumbles and then sprawls at the bottom. Jesus’s voice is heard for the first time, though the camera remains on Satan. The subtitle reads, “Get thee behind me, Satan. This is my world.” The archaic English alerts an English-speaking viewer to the text’s biblical origins, although it



Translation, Postcolonialism, and Biblical Film

219

comes from Jesus’s reproach to Peter, not the gospels’ temptation scene.9 Satan gets to his feet and the screen fills with flames as we hear a deepened and distorted version of Satan’s voice saying, “No, this is my world.” The flames then retreat into the middle distance and are now flames coming from a burning building, beginning the story of Jesus’s birth, political awakening, and ultimate killing. The decision to begin with Jesus’s temptation in the desert is an interesting one and unparalleled among Jesus films, to my knowledge. It sets up the story as a binary conflict over the world between Jesus and Satan. There are arguably two roots for this decision—the Synoptic Gospels and the Chester Mystery plays. The Synoptic Gospels all preface their accounts of Jesus’s mature ministry with the temptation. They also couple this with the story of Jesus’s baptism by John, arguably an initiation ceremony with some analogies to Xhosa youth’s circumcision. In the case of the Chester Mystery plays, and more specifically in The Mysteries, Satan’s attempt to usurp God’s throne and subsequent downfall set the subsequent story of both Old and New Testaments in the framework of this cosmic rivalry. The film’s unique scene, however, draws together references to Jesus’s temptation, to Jesus’s rebuke to Peter (Mt. 16:23; Mk 8:33), and to the casting down of Satan from heaven (Lk. 10:18). It sets up the film’s political edge and indeed shows that the gospels’ stories can be read as dealing with the dynamics of colonialism and liberation. This is not a matter just of the relationships between Jews and Romans, but a cosmic contest over who rules this world, Jesus or Satan. Is the incarnation, Jesus as son of God coming into Satan’s world, an act of invasion or an act of liberation? That depends on where you stand.

Son of Man and postcolonial critique For Western audiences particularly, the film acts as a sort of double defamiliarization and refamiliarization of both Jesus’s story and the political situation of contemporary Africa. The disturbing scene opening the story of Jesus’s birth where Mary hides in a school only to realize to her horror that the classroom is piled with the bodies of massacred children has a double effect. It brings to shocking life the massacre of the innocents in Mt. 2:16-18, which otherwise can just be another episode in the all-toofamiliar story of Jesus’s birth and childhood. At the same time, it brings a realization of the significance of contemporary reports of massacres of children, which too easily can be distanced as the kind of thing that happens “over there.” Yet, all that said, Son of Man has at its heart a glaring absence. The film does not mention the Bible. The film’s Africa has no churches and no priests or pastors. In fact, it has no organized religion at all. The film is a prime example of the inevitable gap that removes even the grittiest soap opera from reality, which is that the soap opera characters never watch themselves on television. Yet that is exactly what the millions of people who form the audience and seek to recognize themselves in the program are doing. However authentic the setting and the references to Xhosa culture, the film’s fictional Judea is not simply a fictionalized version of any actual African society. It is a society without the Bible, either present or past.

220

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

The film’s second glaring omission, if we are to read it as a postcolonial text, is the absence of evidence of the continuing presence of European, American, and Asian people and institutions in African societies. All the film’s performers are black Africans and the film conflicts are between black African factions. This then leads us to observe a third omission. Only the barest hints of the coexistence of people with different languages and traditions within African communities appear. Everyone speaks Xhosa and seems to recognize Xhosa customs. Again, this reflects the reality of only the most local of contexts in South Africa (pace the many critics who read the African setting as realistic). However, the Bible’s absence, and the absence of direct display of European colonialism’s continuing effects, does not mean that either is absent from the transaction of viewing the film. The audience brings its knowledge of the Bible and of the contemporary political background to the cinema, however partial and mistaken these perceptions may be. We bring a range of resonance the film characters cannot have; they have no Old Testament, no expectation of a Messiah, no developed religious system, and no explicit history of European colonization. They certainly have no acquaintance with the medieval English Mystery plays. The audience’s role and what it can be expected to know is crucial. As we have seen, that can and must be very different between and even within different audiences. The experience of the film for a British viewer and for a Xhosa viewer cannot be the same, yet the realization of that difference in itself can lead to a defamiliarization and refamiliarization of Jesus’s story and that of the postcolonial struggles for justice and equality within Africa. Another way to put this might be to say that the Bible is so firmly embedded in contemporary South Africa that it does not need to be explicit. Its absence speaks to the audience more insistently and provocatively than its presence might do. By the same token, the film’s paratext does not allow us to forget the complex nexus of commercial and ideological interests that are inescapable for such a production. The continuing dilemmas of any postcolonial society as it seeks to establish its own economic identity in a world structured around global economic institutions may not be spelled out in the film, but the film is embedded in these. It would not do to expect more of Son of Man than it could deliver. A watertight theology of postcolonial liberation is not to be read off the film. Yet it raises questions in a particularly provocative and compelling way partly because of the way in which it both embraces and conceals some of the paradoxes of hybridity. Perhaps rather than functioning as an absence, there is an opacity in the film around the Bible and its connections to postcolonial economics, which may prompt a new recognition of the strange in the familiar and the familiar in the strange.

Notes 1 The only other such film I am aware of is Seduto alla sua destra (Black Jesus 1968) which sets the passion in the Belgian Congo (see Baugh 2011). In Color of the Cross (2006) and Color of the Cross 2: The Resurrection (2008), an African American actor plays Jesus in his final days (see Middleton and Plate 2013).



Translation, Postcolonialism, and Biblical Film

221

2 See, particularly, Gilmour (2009), Holderness (2011: 135–44), Rizzerio (2010), and West (2011: 49–80). 3 On subtitles’ doubly defamiliarizing effect, but also the way in which filmmakers and adapters can manipulate the sense of alterity that subtitles can bring, see Kapsaskis (2008). 4 The partial exception is West’s report of conversations he had with a multiracial class of South African students, including some of Xhosa descent, as they watched the film (2013). The issue of language does not figure largely in the discussions, however. 5 These details are found in Visser (2013: 70–71) where he cites Enthoven’s enterprises favorably as an example of corporate social responsibility in practice. 6 The allusion to Black Skins, White Masks is not mentioned in any of the material on the film I have come across and may be purely coincidental. Nevertheless, it sets up an interesting resonance with the film’s liberative theme. 7 Whether the familiar phrases are back-translations from the Xhosa or the substitution of particular verses from extant English translations for the Xhosa equivalents is moot. 8 Botha mentions some 205 low-budget films, with untrained actors, made in Zulu or Xhosa under the government’s so-called B scheme or Bantu film industry. They either show a young person disillusioned with city life who returns to his homeland and finds fulfillment in tribal life, or they show the seamy side of urban black life, with no reference, however, to the realities of apartheid (2012: 115–17). Both genres clearly reinforce a message that invalidates urban black life. 9 Whether the Xhosa as spoken would have similar resonances is an interesting question that I am not competent to answer.

Works cited Baugh, Lloyd (2011), “The African Face of Jesus in Film – Part One: Valerio Zurlini’s Black Jesus,” Gregorianum, 92: 89–114. Bhabha, Homi (1994), The Location of Culture, London and New York: Routledge. Botha, Martin (2012), South African Cinema 1896-2010, Bristol: Intellect. Fanon, Frantz ([1952] 1967), Black Skins, White Masks, trans. Charles L. Markmann, New York: Grove. Genette, Gerard (1997), Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gilmour, Peter (2009), “The Film Son of Man: An Artistic Revelation of Jesus the Christ,” Journal of Adult Religious Education, 9: 153–63. Glissant, Édouard ([1990] 1997), Poetics of Relation, trans. Betsy Wing, Ann Arbor: The  University of Michigan Press. Holderness, Graham (2011), Re-Writing Jesus: Christ in 20th-Century Fiction and Film, London: Bloomsbury. Kapsaskis, Dionysius (2008), “Translation and Film: On the Defamiliarizing Effect of Subtitles,” New Voices in Translation Studies, 4: 42–52. Middleton, Darren J. N., and S. Brent Plate (2013), “‘Who Do You See That I Am?’ Son of Man and Global Perspectives on Jesus Films,” in Richard Walsh, Jeffrey L. Staley, and Adele Reinhartz (eds.), Son of Man: An African Jesus Film, 133–48, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Rizzerio, Laura (2010), “Son of Man: Film de Mark Dornford-May, 2006, Afrique du Sud, 86’ Drame,” Lumen Vitae, 457–60.

222

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Shureteh, Halla (2015), “Venuti versus Nida: A Representational Conflict in Translation Theory,” Babel, 61: 78–92. Visser, Wayne (2013), Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility: An Introductory Text on CSR Theory and Practice, Past, Present and Future, London: Kaleidoscope Future. Walsh, Richard, Jeffrey L. Staley, and Adele Reinhartz (eds.) (2013), Son of Man: An African Jesus Film, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. West, Gerald O. (2013), “The Son of Man in South Africa,” in Richard Walsh, Jeffrey L. Staley, and Adele Reinhartz (eds.), Son of Man: An African Jesus Film, 2–22, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. West, William G. (2011), “Competing Cinematic Christs: A Critical Matrix for Evaluating Jesus-Story Films of the Twenty-First Century,” PhD diss. University of Texas, Dallas.

18

American Slavery, Cinematic Violence, and the (Sometimes) Good Book Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch

In May 1849, two prominent American abolitionists and former slaves—Frederick Douglass and Henry Highland Garnet—publicly debated the Bible’s significance for the enslaved (Powery and Sadler 2016: 45). Specifically, they clashed over whether money should be raised for purchasing Bibles to be smuggled into the South and distributed to slaves. The spotty historical records suggest that Garnet—a Presbyterian pastor—believed that these contraband Bibles would induce slave insurrections. After all, Nat Turner’s biblically inspired 1831 rebellion was still a recent memory. Frederick Douglass, however, vehemently opposed this scheme. Having spent more years in slavery than Garnet and having more recently gained his freedom, Douglass vividly recalled that slavers often wielded a whip in one hand and the Bible in the other. He would later write: “I have met many religious colored people, at the South [sic], who are under the delusion that God requires them to submit to slavery, and to wear their chains with meekness and humility” (Nichols 1963: 82). Douglass realized that the Bible is an ambivalent sign, whose meaning is determined by people with the ability and authority to decode it. As few slaves had opportunities to develop the literacy that would enable them to interpret these texts for themselves (Powery and Sadler 2016: 47), biblical interpretation remained primarily in the hands of the master class, mandating slaves’ docile compliance to the status quo. Films depicting American slavery feature Bibles in various ways—as tools of oppression and liberation. Surprisingly, recent movies about American slavery— produced in what seems an increasingly pluralistic, post-Christian society—feature biblical elements even more prominently than did an earlier generation of plantation genre films. Older slavery films, like The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Gone with the Wind (1939), perpetuated racist stereotypes and nostalgically idealized the Old South (see Bogle 2016). Few films adopted a slave’s perspective or made any effort to depict realistically slavery’s inherent violence.1 Recent movies about America’s antebellum era—like Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained (2012), Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (2013), and Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation (2016)—not only depict the horrors of slavery from a slave’s perspective, but do so by crafting scenes of graphic violence.

224

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

In this chapter, I will compare the American slavery films of Tarantino, McQueen, and Parker—interrogating the ways in which each uses the Bible in both legitimizing and challenging ways. As these three directors exerted an unusual degree of control over their films, their directorial styles and artistic intentions constitute an important part of this conversation. Moreover, these films must be understood as expressions of increasingly explicit media violence evident since the “new brutality” of the 1990s (Grønstad 2008: 155), just as they also must be examined as products of their own cultural contexts—especially the volatile landscape of US race relations. Drawing on cognitive and affect theories, I will consider how different ways of representing violence onscreen might shape the film viewing experience. Ultimately, I will argue that McQueen’s stylistic choices—including his use of scripture and violence—function not merely to entertain viewers but also to evoke a lasting, meaningful reaction.

Violence and representation In prerelease publicity interviews, these three directors each declared intentions to create a movie confronting viewers with slavery’s brutality and contributing to a public conversation about America’s racial history. This raises the question of whether or not popular films are in fact capable of effectively communicating historical realities, engendering a productive dialogue, or encouraging social responsibility. Some dismiss this possibility asserting that film’s status as a consumer commodity allows only for entertainment, not active engagement (see Miles 1996: 63–65) and others claim that religion in film is rarely taken seriously as a motivating force for rejecting violence (see Stone 1999); nevertheless, onscreen violence can provoke visceral, emotional responses that, at times, linger long after the viewing experience. Is it possible that some modes of representation are more effective than others at encouraging critical engagement? Media historian David Slocum suggests the need for “more sophisticated accounts of cinematic forms of violence” that “thoughtfully explicate its functions and contexts” rather than assuming that all film violence is monolithic (2001: 2). Any attempt to define violence is inevitably subjective, value-laden, and complicated by assumptions, which vary across cultures and over time, about what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable uses of force (for discussions, see Avalos 2009; Stone 1999; Slocum 2001). Cinematic violence refers to the stylistic encoding of a violent act using elements of cinema (e.g., camera placement, lighting, editing, sound) according to aesthetic conventions that have evolved over time and are accepted as realistic because they conform to prevailing standards of representation (Prince 2003: 34). In the silent era, victims of violence flailed about dramatically before falling to the ground at a comfortable distance from the camera. The introduction of sound, multiple camera perspectives, editing, and close-ups created many more possibilities for stylizing and intensifying screen violence. However, the 1930s Motion Picture Production Code proscribed gruesome depictions of violence and those deemed a negative moral influence. Violence that could not be depicted directly onscreen could be obscured from the spectator’s view or implied by visual metonymy (e.g., shadow-play silhouettes). Moreover, it could be marked as righteous—and, thus, subject to less



American Slavery, Cinematic Violence, and the (Sometimes) Good Book

225

scrutiny by censors—if performed by a reluctant hero, who only uses force to protect the innocent or mete out justice. Such constructions contributed to cinematic worlds characterized by simplistic dichotomies between good and evil (Plantinga 1998: 80). Classical Hollywood also favored impersonal depictions of violence that revealed little bodily trauma and minimized victims’ suffering. In the standard clutch-and-fall aesthetic, the victim “falls into a trance and sinks slowly and gracefully out of frame” (Prince 2003: 153–54). This whitewashed violence entertained without encouraging audiences to engage critically with the onscreen images. In the 1960s and 1970s, ultra-violent films, like Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and The Wild Bunch (1969), broke from classical restraint and established a new visual syntax. Manipulation of camera speeds and kinetic montage editing extended its screen time while creating a stimulating barrage of brutal images. Exploding squibs, graphic body wounds, and slow motion increased screen violence’s “stylistic amplitude” (Prince 2003: 35). Moreover, a proliferation of flawed heroes compromised the once clear separation between good and evil. This shift toward more graphic films was enabled in part by changes within the movie industry that replaced the crumbling Production Code in 1968 with the Code and Rating Administration System’s G-M-R-X classifications (Prince 1998: 21–22). Just as significant, however, were the tumultuous political events and cultural changes that brought violence to the forefront of America’s national consciousness: the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.; the murder of Sharon Tate; the subsequent Manson trial; the widely unpopular involvement of the United States in Vietnam; and social protests and riots all of which fueled a New Left critique of American culture. More graphic, morally ambiguous films resonated with that critique by deconstructing the romanticized myths underlying earlier movies.2 Film critics and reviewers still debate whether these ultra-violent movies represented the decline of cinema into amoral, tasteless entertainment or an appropriate response to that historical moment. Stephen Prince highlights aesthetic structures in Sam Peckinpah’s movies that, he claims, provoke viewers into disturbingly ambivalent responses while simultaneously encouraging them to consider the morality of onscreen violence (2003: 8). Other media historians, such as Cynthia Carter and Kay Weaver, argue that—regardless of their artistic intentions—directors like Peckinpah were artistically complicit in aestheticizing violence for viewer enjoyment. They especially critique what they see as the glorification of an excessively violent masculinity often coupled with female subjugation or narrative insignificance (2003: 57–58). While these important reservations should be seriously considered, treating all violent films since the 1960s and 1970s as homogenous oversimplifies the situation. Instead, we might ask what cinematic styles and structures invite viewers to consider the moral implications of screen violence while avoiding the excesses noted by critics? As early as 1974, film reviewer Pauline Kael pointed in this direction: It’s the emotionlessness of so many violent movies that I’m becoming anxious about, not the rare violent movies (Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, Mean Streets) that make us care about the characters and what happens to them. A violent movie that intensifies our experience of violence is very different from a movie in which

226

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

acts of violence are perfunctory. . . . There’s something deeply wrong about anyone’s taking for granted the dissociation that this carnage without emotion represents. (Kael 1974: 83)

Similarly, Devin McKinney distinguishes between weak and strong violence in film. The former exploits violence for the sake of guilt-free entertainment. It is tied to a world clearly bifurcated into good and evil. While it might evoke an immediate visceral response, its impact generally does not last (1993: 19). Strong violence, on the other hand, engages viewer empathy and acknowledges moral ambiguity. It refuses “glib comfort and immediate resolutions” (McKinney 1993: 21). Rather it invites—and often requires—shifts in one’s moral positioning. This distinction provides a convenient set of criteria against which we might measure the use of violence by the three slave films under consideration.

Tarantino’s splatter comedy Quentin Tarantino unveiled his lofty intentions for Django Unchanged (2012) years before the film was released: I want to explore something that really hasn’t been done. I want to do movies that deal with America’s horrible past with slavery and stuff. . . . [I want to] deal with everything that America has never dealt with because it’s ashamed of it, and other countries don’t really deal with because they don’t feel they have the right to. But I can deal with it all right, and I’m the guy to do it. (quoted in Hiscock 2007)

After the film’s Oscar nomination, he claimed, “I am responsible for people talking about slavery in America in a way they have not in 30 years” (Williams 2013). Did Django Unchained create a genuine critical dialogue around the subjects of race and slavery in 2012? And did the film acknowledge the Bible’s ambivalent role in antebellum society? The film hit theaters as Barack Obama was running for a second presidential term against Republican candidate, Mitt Romney. While Obama would ultimately win this race quite handily, some of his detractors played upon racial anxieties and Islamophobia to mobilize conservative white voters. Especially notable were continued accusations questioning whether President Obama was a natural-born US citizen (Hahn 2012). The year 2012 also introduced racial profiling to public awareness with the tragic shooting death of unarmed African American teenager, Trayvon Martin. This certainly seemed like an appropriate time for a genuine public dialogue around the subject of race. However, a closer look at Tarantino’s film suggests that it was unlikely to invite that kind of dialogue. Django Unchained is a revenge fantasy set in the antebellum South. A slave named Django (Jamie Foxx) agrees to help a German bounty hunter, Dr. King Schulz (Christopher Waltz), in exchange for his freedom and Schulz’s assistance in rescuing his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). After a rollicking good time killing wanted



American Slavery, Cinematic Violence, and the (Sometimes) Good Book

227

men for their bounty and shocking white people with the sight of a black man riding a horse, the men head further South to discover that Broomhilda has been sold to Calvin Candy (Leonardo DiCaprio), the proprietor of Candyland Plantation and a notorious peddler of Mandingo fighters. They infiltrate Candyland disguised as interested buyers, with the intention of acquiring Broomhilda as well, but ultimately Django regains his wife through more violent means. Like any Tarantino film, Django Unchained presents its excessive violence with tongue-in-cheek comedic flair and styled to minimize its consequence while maximizing spectatorial pleasure. Audiences are invited to laugh or cheer, not to consider the brutality’s moral implications. Undeveloped cardboard villains explode into showers of blood and viscera, but they do not suffer onscreen. Their deaths resemble cartoon violence—extremely destructive but entailing no real-world repercussions. Thus, when Django hesitates to kill a wanted-man-turned-farmer in front of his young son. Dr. Schultz pulls out a wanted poster to remind his partner that this is a bad guy. Schultz may as well be Tarantino himself, flourishing the movie script and instructing Django and the audience to check their morality at the door. But just in case, Tarantino films the reformed gunman’s violent death at an extreme distance, rendering his son’s reaction emotionally inconsequential. Audiences are given little reason to care for any of the characters. The killed are mere fodder. Even the Brittle brothers, Django’s former abusive overseers, are buffoonish caricatures. The eldest, Big John, literally papers himself with pages from the Bible as he gleefully prepares to lash a slave woman for a trivial infraction. He cites Gen. 9:2: “The fear of ye and the dread of ye shall be upon every beast of the earth.” While this badly decontextualizes the post-deluge divine promise, it could be interpreted ironically given that the “brutish” Big John is attempting to dehumanize his slave victims. Likely, little thought was invested in such exegetical details. Tarantino simply uses the Bible to establish Big John’s cartoonish villainy and the pages on his torso to draw attention to Django’s stellar marksmanship. Blood blooms across the pages when he shoots him in the heart. Big John looks down in surprise; Django delivers a sarcastic taunt; and the villain falls slowly forward into the dirt. Noting that the Brittle brothers represent Django’s “entire life of oppression personified,” commentator Jesse Williams complains that the ease with which Django dispatches his former oppressors suggests that “slavery’s not that big of a deal if you show some initiative” (2013). The film’s depiction of black characters is, likewise, unflattering and unsuited for an honest discussion about slavery. Django himself is not particularly heroic. He initially seems to forget about his wife during his travels with Dr. Schultz. After being given his freedom, he seems more interested in buying new clothes than immediately finding  Broomhilda—even though he is aware that she is likely being sexually exploited. Broomhilda serves only as the damsel in distress, a thinly veiled pretext for violent masculinity’s glorification. Aside from Samuel L. Jackson’s thoroughly stereotypical Uncle Tom character, other slaves simply do not matter.3 As Williams points out, these slaves demonstrate little personhood (2013). Without leadership, they remain for days sitting slack-jawed in an open cage—even after the final credits roll. This unflattering depiction does not

228

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

invite audiences to empathize with the enslaved’s plight. Nor do fanciful scenes of Mandingo fighting and slave women frolicking on swings while wearing ball gowns offer a historically accurate representation of slavery.4 Only the German bounty hunter—although hardly a pacifist—seems morally offended by slavery’s violence and injustice. It is he, not Django, who can barely stand the grisly sight of dogs ripping apart a fugitive. It is he who sacrifices his own life to end the odious Calvin Candy. Tarantino’s martyred Dr. King Schultz—who delivers a motivational mountaintop story—might be an intentional pointer to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Williams 2013).5 Even if it is so, Tarantino rushes on to valorize instead the hypermasculine Django as a pseudo-messianic figure dealing justice through violence. The stylized shootout at Candyland following Schultz’s death features a throbbing fusion of Tupac Shakur and James Brown that ends with a sudden silence into which Tupac Shakur says: “Expect me, nigga. Expect me like you expect Jesus to come back. Expect me, nigga.”6 The shootout ends with Django’s capture, torture, near-castration,7 and exile to a lifetime of hard labor. But he soon overcomes his captors, and, as he rides toward a final confrontation, the soundtrack again suggests that he is a messianic avenger. John Legend sings: “Now, I’m not afraid to do the Lord’s work. You say vengeance is his, but I’m a do it first. . . . If he’s not ready to die, he best prepare for it. My judgment’s divine.” In an NPR interview, Tarantino explained the “two types of violence in this film: There’s the brutal reality that slaves lived under. . . . And then there’s the violence of Django’s retribution. And that’s movie violence, and that’s fun and that’s cool, and that’s really enjoyable and kind of what you’re waiting for” (Gross 2013). Audiences are unreasonably expected to distinguish between the real violence perpetrated against the slaves (not realistically depicted in Tarantino’s film) and the fantasy violence of Django’s messianic retribution. Critically engaging the former while enjoying the latter would require switching between mindsets in a way that the film does not encourage. Far from inviting a genuine dialogue about slavery or about the Bible’s use to buttress and challenge that system, Django Unchained merely reinforces the Hollywood myth of redemptive violence. Unlike many violent films of the 1960s and 1970s, Tarantino’s movies celebrate violence as spectacle for its own sake without concern for its moral implications (Prince 1998: 240–41). Tarantino’s over reliance on cinematic pastiche and pop-culture references makes it difficult for his films to comment meaningfully on real-world issues. As with Inglourious Basterds (2009), an extreme example of historical injustice simply provides a guilt-free justification for extreme violence. Both films trivialize history for the sake of escapist entertainment.8

McQueen’s artistic rumination When Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (2013) was released, the United States was obviously far from a postracial society. The beginning of Obama’s second term saw protests following George Zimmerman’s acquittal on charges of second-degree murder for Trayvon Martin’s shooting death. The Black Lives Matter movement emerged in this context. More protest and riots soon followed as the media focused attention on



American Slavery, Cinematic Violence, and the (Sometimes) Good Book

229

several successive cases in which police killed unarmed African American men. While such incidents were not new, they had never before received focused media attention as part of a larger systematic problem. Race relations were at the forefront of public attention to a degree that had not happened since the civil rights movement. Steve McQueen called Solomon Northup’s real-life memoir the “Anne Frank diary of America” and wanted his film to restore this forgotten episode to popular consciousness (Travors 2013) and start a conversation about race and US history— including the Bible’s complex functions in antebellum society (Merritt 2013). Although many have accused the visually beautiful 12 Years of aestheticizing violence, it differs significantly from previous cinematic depictions of American slavery. McQueen’s unusual storytelling techniques flout expectations and deny catharsis and thereby invite audiences to engage the film as more than escapist entertainment (Ball 2016: 175–77). McQueen traces the story of the kidnapping and twelve-year enslavement of Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a freeborn black man. 12 Years begins in media res with a montage showing Northup’s captivity—dejected slaves, white-suited masters, forests of sugar cane, and the juice from ripe berries that he will later use as ink for a secret missive. McQueen then cuts abruptly to Northup’s prior, idyllic life as a freeman—as he shops with his well-dressed family, performs the violin to applause, and interacts with whites as equals. The juxtaposition underlines the distance between respected, free man and mere chattel. The trajectory of Northup’s memoir and the film reverse slave narratives’ typical elevation arc in which slaves gain freedom and raise their social and economic status through hard work (Ball 2016: 180). Such narratives reinforced a conservative ideology by ignoring the social barriers that constrained individual self-improvement. Northup’s different arc (freedom to slavery) underlines the precariousness of black freedoms in an unjust society. Lured to Washington, DC with the promise of work and drugged by his would-be partners, Northrop awakens, chained in a dark basement. The first violent scene, his beating with a wooden paddle, is historically accurate but not the iconic image of the lash. Shadows reveal Northup’s facial expressions but mask the beating’s graphic details. Nevertheless, the sudden violence, occurring blocks from the Capitol building, invites audiences to share Northup’s vulnerability. Violence lurks beneath every interaction as Northup, renamed Platt, is shipped to New Orleans and sold in a slave market. But his purchase by a benevolent Southern planter, named Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), temporarily lulls audiences into complacency. Cinema’s archetypal “good master,” Ford forms a bond with Northup, appreciates his ingenuity, and gifts him a violin. He also gathers his household, slave and free, for Sunday services. Yet, Ford also separates a slave woman from her children, turns a blind eye on her grief, and later sells her. His abusive overseer, Tibeats (Paul Dano), taunts Ford’s slaves with a ghoulish lynching song (“Run, Nigga, Run”). McQueen uses this song as a nonsynchronous sound bridge to Ford’s first sermon, undercutting this supposedly good master’s pious veneer. Moreover, the sermon includes a misreading of Mt. 22:32, which has Ford ironically declare, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”

230

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

An extended sequence in which Tibeats nearly lynches Northrop brings home the limits of Ford’s benevolence and Northup’s status as chattel-property. Here, as elsewhere, McQueen uses uncomfortably long takes (totaling four minutes), forcing the audience to feel time’s slow passage, as Northup hangs by the neck for hours with his toes barely touching the ground. In one wide shot, everyday plantation life proceeds at a leisurely pace around him, suggesting this abuse is commonplace. His life in Ford’s hands, Northrup remains in this predicament until his owner finally arrives to cut him down. Aware that his slave has made an enemy of Tibeats, Ford sells him to recoup his financial losses. Viewers expecting a good, sympathetic master are kept off balance and forced to reevaluate their empathies.9 Ford is nevertheless better than Epps, Northup’s second master and a known “nigger breaker.” Epps beats slaves who fail to pick their expected quota of cotton and sexually exploits Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o). He also preaches scripture in more threatening, less paternalistic tones than Ford did. Through emphasis and repetition, Epps identifies with the master of Lk. 12:47 (KJV): [Reading haltingly] “That servant . . . which knew his Lord’s will . . . which knew his Lord’s will . . . and prepared not himself . . . prepared not himself . . . neither did he according to his will . . . shall be beaten with many stripes.” Do you hear that? Stripes! That nigger don’t obey his Lord. . . . That’s his master, do ya see? That there nigger shall be beaten with many stripes! Now “many” signifies a great many . . . forty, a hundred, hundred-fifty lashes. . . . That’s scripter!

Through the (relatively) benign Ford and the sadistic Epps, the film creates a morally complex universe. Ford and Epps use the Bible in different ways to perpetuate the status quo. Epps’s self-serving hermeneutic deifies himself while projecting his baser desires on the racialized other. Ford’s paternalistic concern for his slaves’ spiritual education fails to acknowledge their shared humanity. Meanwhile, the slaves use biblical imagery in spirituals, slave funerals, and when calling down the “curse of the Pharaohs” upon the master class. McQueen’s film, thus, realistically explores the slavers and enslaved’s complex use of biblical texts. McQueen’s construction of a story, in which some likeable characters are complicit in slavery, challenges audiences to continually assess their empathies. Such moral ambiguity is consistent with McKinney’s “strong violence.” Likewise, McQueen’s uncomfortably long takes force audiences to experience slavery’s horrors in what seems like real time. The film encourages viewers to adopt the victims’ perspectives. Nonviolent scenes—tableaux of Northup alone or groups of slaves staring into the camera (and at the viewer)—are constructed quite formally, as if reminding the audience that they watch a film. Such Brechtian aesthetic techniques work against audience immersion in the film’s fictional world, slow the story’s pace, and defuse the spectacle of violence. These tableaux invite audiences to pause, to think about the chattel system’s inherent violence, and to consider its consequences. 12 Years unsettles because of how it stages and contextualizes violence. McQueen refuses to film violent scenes “in expected, and frankly, comfortable and reassuring ways” (Ball 2016: 177). Disregarding Tarantino’s splatter comedy, most previous slavery



American Slavery, Cinematic Violence, and the (Sometimes) Good Book

231

films use melodrama to provoke viewers’ sentimentality and emotion (on melodrama as the American means to process slavery and discrimination, see Williams 2001: xiii– xvi). McQueen eschews this expected melodrama and, thus, withholds the catharsis of an effusion of tears over another’s suffering by maintaining “a cool aesthetic detachment throughout the film” (Ball 2016: 180). Instead of staging violent scenes with the expected swelling of orchestral music and other sentimental trappings, McQueen constructs a world of traumatic, banal violence that renders the chattel system’s inherent brutality visible and invites audiences to consider its contemporary legacy.

Parker’s conventional melodrama Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation’s premiere at Sundance in January 2016 immediately caused Oscar buzz. A week earlier, the Academy’s all-white list of acting nominees had sparked online protest (#OscarsSoWhite). Nat Turner’s rebellion told by a rising black filmmaker seemed the perfect way to confront Hollywood’s lack of diversity and America’s fraught racial present. Parker’s story of black resistance emerged from a context of increased racial strife illustrated by the inflammatory racial rhetoric associated with fears about the “browning of America” (see Frey 2015: 226) and with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Candidate Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States; promised to build a wall to keep out undocumented Mexicans, whom he characterized as criminals and rapists; and repeatedly associated African Americans with crimeinfested inner cities. Violence broke out between protesters and supporters at many Republican campaign rallies (Holland 2016). These circumstances made a film inviting an honest public discussion of America’s racial woes, past and present, pertinent. Yet The Birth of a Nation floundered amid publicity about prior accusations of sexual assault against Parker and his co-writer, Jean Celestin.10 Given that Parker co-wrote, directed, and starred in Birth, it is difficult to ignore this scandal—especially given the movie’s inclusion of two fictional rape scenes. Protests against the film and its treatment of gender necessarily became an important aspect of its reception. Parker intended to position Nat Turner alongside other American heroes willing to die for freedom. He defiantly appropriated the title of D. W. Griffith’s 1915 blockbuster (based on The Clansmen, a novel by Thomas Dixon, Jr.) glorifying the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The films’ titles allude to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, characterizing the Civil War as the nation’s second founding, “a new birth of freedom.” For Dixon and Griffith, this birth reunited a white North and South, quelling the threat of lawless freed slaves. Parker reclaimed the title to affirm the equality of all, regardless of race, and proposed that Turner began this struggle. Styling as a hero a black man who led a bloody armed revolt in which over fifty whites—including women and children—were killed would be no small task (though certainly no harder than depicting the Klan as heroic).11 Parker chose to do so by casting Turner’s rebellion as a typical Hollywood hero story. Predictably, Parker creates onedimensional villains and protagonists, relies upon cinematic clichés, and distinguishes sharply between immoral and righteous force in a manner that reinforces the myth of

232

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

redemptive violence. Like Tarantino, Parker underpins this myth with biblical texts and images that only justify the use of violence—never critique it. This conventional, melodramatic biopic sometimes verges on a superhero origin story (Cunningham 2016). It begins with an African tribal ceremony around a bonfire where elders recognize young Turner as a prophet because of a birthmark. Moving quickly away from these communal traditions, Parker focuses on the individual hero. The drumbeat heard in the bonfire scene returns only when Nat dreams of mysterious figures in the woods (and briefly once more as the revolt begins). These dreams hint at the historical Turner’s apocalyptic visions of spiritual warfare, but Parker reduces Turner’s visionary experiences to his “exotic” African heritage—rendering Turner’s Christian faith more palatable to modern audiences (Jones 2016). The film depicts rational, not apocalyptic Christianity. Before Nat’s father runs away after killing a white man in self-defense,12 he tells his son, “You’re a child of God. You have a purpose. Remember that.” Soon after, Mistress Turner teaches the precocious Nat to read the Bible (other books are “for white folks”). When he reads Jas 4:8-9 (KJV) in his master’s church—a text of judgment against sinners—a downward camera tilt moves from a sacred heart print of Jesus to young Nat. The film’s heavyhanded symbolism makes its biblical subtext clear; Nat will be the instrument of divine judgment. Parker presents Turner’s development as a slow awakening. About thirty minutes into the film, Sam Turner (Armie Hammer), Nat’s childhood playmate turned master, hires him out to preach “submission” to area slaves to curtail insurrection. This brings Nat into contact with several violent atrocities, including starving slaves and the brutal forced feeding of a man refusing to eat. Sickened, Nat’s reluctant preaching of the expected texts (e.g., 1 Pet. 2:18-19; Gen. 9:25) slowly changes to protest and resistance (Ps. 149), delivered in a rhythmic cadence evocative of later African American preaching. But it is not until the rape of his wife, Cherry (Aja Naomi King), and Esther, another slave woman, and his own whipping that he decides to lead an insurrection. The styling of these rape scenes is troubling. Both rapes are experienced from the perspective of male characters, devastated by their inability to protect “their women.” During Esther’s off-camera rape, viewers wait for her return with Nat and her husband, Hark. When she appears, Esther does not speak at all. She is an object to be taken or defended by men. Further, her rape and Cherry’s have no basis in the historical account of Turner’s rebellion. Parker introduces the rapes to activate one of Hollywood’s tropic pretexts for violent male revenge. This fictionalizing, which also includes omitting slave women from the revolt, sadly minimizes their historical agency.13 Turner’s whipping also motivates the revolt and codes him as a classic cinematic hero. As in many action films, Birth demonstrates Turner’s triumphant masculinity through his ability to endure tremendous physical pain on behalf of his ideals. The whipping occurs because Turner dared to baptize a white man and then disrespected a white pastor by engaging him in a scripture-quoting argument. While the sequence is badly rushed and poorly handled, Parker clearly means for it to contribute to the film’s battle over biblical interpretation. Turner soon after begins to organize his rebellion after reading 1 Samuel 15.



American Slavery, Cinematic Violence, and the (Sometimes) Good Book

233

The revolt is strangely anticlimactic, passing in a blur of montage, with highly sanitized violence. Few people are killed onscreen, none of them women or children. Most of the slain are rapists and those carefully coded as “white trash.” The most grisly death is the decapitation of one particularly despicable man by his former victim. This slave, shown briefly from behind holding a severed head, is reminiscent of David with the head of Goliath. Another fleeting glimpse shows a male slave killing an overseer before rescuing a black woman from his bed. The woman clings to him like a child, reinforcing the idea that this violence is necessary for black men to protect helpless black women. Nat’s murder of Sam should be a climactic moment, given their childhood friendship. However, the film’s portrayal of Sam as an indolent drunk and self-serving mercenary prevents audience attachment to him or concern for his demise. Parker’s heavy-handed symbolism—a wounded Sam crawls into the hallway where a crossemblazoned stained glass window is framed between him and Turner before the final blow—further distracts from the scene’s potential impact. Otherwise, Nat personally kills only the man who threatened his father and raped his wife in a revenge scene obviously meant to satisfy spectators.14 The film’s stylization neatly divides violence into two categories: slavery’s immoral violence and the revolt’s righteous violence. The film’s use of scripture underlines this stark ethical duality by emphasizing that the Bible can be used both to subjugate slaves (Tit. 2:9) and to empower rebellion (1 Sam. 15). Belaboring this point, Parker has Turner assert it prior to the rebellion: “I see now for every verse they use to support our bondage, there’s another demanding our freedom. Every verse they use to justify our torture, there’s another damning them to hell for those actions.” Only briefly does the film consider using the Bible to critique violence when Cherry, following her assault, reminds her enraged husband that “those who live by the sword will die by the sword” (Mt. 26:52). Even she eventually endorses the revolt and bids Nat to “fight for us all.” This stark ethical dualism reinscribes formulaic Hollywood clichés associated with the myth of redemptive violence. Our hero suffers heinous offences, including the rape of his beloved and a physical ordeal, which motivate his campaign of righteous, lethal violence to (re)establish and defend democratic values. This standard melodramatic template, accompanied by swelling music and motivational speeches before a suicidal last stand belongs to the tradition of Mel Gibson’s Braveheart.15 Like Gibson, Parker blatantly presents his protagonist as a Christ figure from the moment his camera tilts from an image of Jesus to young Nat. He is destined to lead this rebellion and for Christ-like suffering and martyrdom. During his whipping, he is strapped to a post with arms outstretched like Christ on the cross. Parker cuts between shots of wincing onlookers and extreme close-ups of Turner’s face that reveal his agony. When Nat is hanged, his silent march through an angry mob is reminiscent of the cinematic Jesus’s Via Dolorosa. Again the camera offers an extreme close-up of Turner’s face as he is “lifted up” by the hangman. In both scenes he is comforted by a kitschy vision of a female angel. Parker repeatedly claimed that he wanted to confront viewers with the question “What kind of Christian are you? . . . Are you a Nat Turner Christian, or are you a Christian like those who hung and decapitated him and skinned his body and crushed

234

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

his flesh to grease?” (Wilkinson 2016). The phrasing makes clear Parker’s “right” answer, but it also oversimplifies antebellum hermeneutics by turning his film into a simplistic morality play. It might temporarily inflame audiences, but it does not invite moral reflection about slavery’s violence and its consequences.

Conclusion While Tarantino, McQueen, and Parker all wanted to produce films inviting serious public discourse about race and slavery, only McQueen succeeds. Tarantino and Parker both construct simplistic ethical dualisms in which their messianic hero protects innocents by meting out righteous judgment against cartoonishly sadistic oppressors. Biblical imagery appears only to highlight these two violent options. By contrast, McQueen constructs a morally ambiguous universe in which the Bible is used a variety of ways and not always in the service of violence. Eschewing Tarantino’s escapist fantasy and Parker’s cathartic melodrama, he refuses to provide audiences with “glib comfort and immediate resolutions” (McKinney 1993: 21).

Notes 1 Roots (1977) was something of an exception, but television constrained its violence. Cuba (La última cena, The Last Supper 1976) and Italy (Queimada, Burn! 1969) produced more radical depictions of slavery. 2 For example, Bonnie and Clyde invites viewer identification with criminals and visually stages their slow-motion deaths in a hail of bullets as a use of excessive violence by the state. 3 White characters do repeatedly describe Django as unique (“an exceptional nigger”). Candy even claims that he is like “one in ten thousand” blacks, referencing the talented tenth popularized by W. E. B. Du Bois. 4 Mandingo fighting was not a historical practice (Desilet 2014: 33). Tarantino borrows this idea from Mandingo (1975). 5 Williams also suggests that Tarantino seems to understand himself as a white Dr. King, “blessing us with his black liberation film” (2013). 6 Tarantino’s oeuvre has been roundly criticized for his excessive use of this racial slur (Pinkerton 2013). 7 The display of Django’s abused, nude body typifies the homoerotic fascination with the black male body in Tarantino’s oeuvre (Carter and Weaver 2003: 67). 8 Action figures based on the film, including Django and Stephen the house slave, were withdrawn from sale after black activists criticized them (Williams 2013). 9 McQueen plays with the expectation of the “white savior” with Ford and with Armsby, who also betrays Northup. Some critics identify Bass, played by famed actor and film financier Brad Pitt, as the film’s white savior (Sepinwall 2016). However, his screen time is very limited and he does not reappear after promising assistance. 10 Parker and Celestin were charged with raping an unconscious woman in 1999. Parker was acquitted and Celestin’s conviction was later overturned (Sepinwall 2016). News of the woman’s suicide in 2012 renewed public sympathy for her family. Parker’s



11 12 13 14 15

American Slavery, Cinematic Violence, and the (Sometimes) Good Book

235

mishandling of the incident during promotional interviews aggravated the scandal. The accuser’s sister published a statement in Variety decrying the film’s use of a rape scene (Loeffler 2016). Perhaps the rebellion’s grizzliest killing was the murder of an infant sleeping in its cradle. Turner claimed he and his men originally forgot the infant and intentionally returned to kill him, having agreed not to spare women or children (Cunningham 2016). Parker explains the scene in which Turner’s father is stopped, harassed, and nearly killed by a slave patrol as a thinly veiled reference to modern police harassment of African Americans (Rampell 2016). A slave named Lucy was executed among the rebels, but she does not appear in the film (Onion 2016). The historical Nat Turner claimed that he had been unable to “kill anyone by my own hand” aside from a single white woman (Sepinwall 2016). Birth borrows several of its rhetorical strategies from Braveheart, Parker’s favorite movie (Edelstein 2016). The credits thank Mel Gibson.

Works cited Avalos, Hector (2009), “Film and the Apologetics of Biblical Violence,” Journal of Religion & Film, 13 (1). Available online: http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol13/iss1/2/ (accessed February 15, 2017). Ball, Erica L. (2016), “The Unbearable Liminality of Blackness: Violence in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave,” Transition, 119: 175–86. Bogle, Donald (2016), Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, 5th ed., New York and London: Bloomsbury. Carter, Cynthia, and C. Kay Weaver (2003), Violence and the Media, Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press. Cunningham, Vinson (2016), “‘The Birth of a Nation’ Isn’t Worth Defending,” The New Yorker, October 10. Available online: http://www.newyorker.com/ magazine/2016/10/10/the-birth-of-a-nation-isnt-worth-defending (accessed February 15, 2017). Desilet, Gregory (2014), Screens of Blood: A Critical Approach to Film and Television Violence, Jefferson, NC: MacFarland. Edelstein, David (2016), “‘Birth of a Nation’ Conforms to Hollywood’s Standard Revenge Template,” NPR, October 7. Available online: http://www.npr.org/2016/10/07/496951409/birth-of-a-nation-conforms-to-hollywoods-standard-revenge-template (accessed February 15, 2017). Foner, Philip S., and Robert J. Branham, eds. (1998), Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787-1900, Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press. Frey, William H. (2015), Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Grønstad, Asbjørn (2008), Transfigurations: Violence, Death, and Masculinity in American Cinema, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Gross, Terry (2013), “Quentin Tarantino, ‘Unchained’ and Unruly,” NPR, January 22. Available online: http://www.npr.org/2013/01/02/168200139/quentin-tarantinounchained-and-unruly (accessed February 15, 2017).

236

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Hahn, Steven (2012), “Political Racism in the Age of Obama,” The New York Times, November 10. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/opinion/sunday/ political-racism-in-the-age-of-obama.html (accessed February 15, 2017). Hiscock, John (2007), “Quentin Tarantino: I’m Proud of My Flop,” The Telegraph, April 27. Available online: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/starsandstories/3664742/ Quentin-Tarantino-Im-proud-of-my-flop.html (accessed February 15, 2017). Holland, Jesse (2016), “In 2016 Election, Racial Tensions Run High with Trump Rhetoric,” TMP News, May 28: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/racial-strife-in-2016-withdonald-trump (accessed February 15, 2017). Jones, Eileen (2016), “Honoring the Real Nat Turner: The Birth of a Nation Isn’t Up to Capturing the Brutal, Prophetic Justice of Nat Turner’s Rebellion,” The Jacobin, October 15. Available online: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/birth-of-a-nation-natturner-nate-parker/ (accessed February 15, 2017). Kael, Pauline (1974), “Killing Time,” The New Yorker, January 14: 83. Loeffler, Sharon (2016), “Nate Parker’s ‘Birth of a Nation’ Exploits My Sister All Over Again,” Variety, September 29. Available online: http://variety.com/2016/film/news/ nate-parker-birth-of-a-nation-rape-claims-sister-penn-state-1201874004/ (accessed February 15, 2017). McKinney, Devin (1993), “Violence: The Strong and the Weak,” Film Quarterly, 46 (4): 16–22. Merritt, John (2013), “‘12 Years a Slave’ Portrays Religion at its Best and Worst,” Religion News Service, September 16. Available online: http://religionnews.com/2013/09/16/12years-slave-religion-best-worst/ (accessed February 15, 2017). Miles, Margaret R. (1996), Seeing and Believing: Religion and Values in the Movies, Boston: Beacon. Nichols, Charles H., ed. (1963), Many Thousands Gone: The Ex-Slaves’ Account of Their Bondage and Freedom, Leiden: Brill. Onion, Rebecca (2016), “How The Birth of a Nation Uses Fact and Fiction,” Slate, October 14. Available online: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/10/14/the_birth_ of_a_nation_historical_accuracy_what_s_fact_and_what_s_fiction.html (accessed February 15, 2017). Pinkerton, Nick (2013), “Film of the Week: Django Unchained,” Sight & Sound, 23 (2). Available online: http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviewsrecommendations/film-week-django-unchained (accessed February 15, 2017). Plantinga, Carl (1998), “Spectacles of Death: Clint Eastwood and Violence in ‘Unforgiven’,” Cinema Journal, 37 (2): 65–83. Powery, Emerson B., and Rodney S. Sadler, Jr. (2016), The Genesis of Liberation: Biblical Interpretation in the Antebellum Narratives of the Enslaved, Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Prince, Stephen (1998), Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies, Austin: University of Texas Press. Prince, Stephen (2003), Classical Film Violence: Designing and Regulating Brutality in Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1968, Brunswick and London: Rutgers. Rampell, Ed (2016), “The Last Shall Be First in ‘The Birth of a Nation’,” The Progressive, October 6. Available online: http://progressive.org/dispatches/last-shall-first-the-birthnation/ (accessed February 15, 2017). Sepinwall, Alyssa (2016), “Why Audiences Must See Nate Parker’s ‘Birth of a Nation’, Despite the Controversy,” History News Network, October 12. Available online: http:// historynewsnetwork.org/article/164115 (accessed February 15, 2017).



American Slavery, Cinematic Violence, and the (Sometimes) Good Book

237

Slocum, J. David, ed. (2001), Violence and American Cinema, New York and London: Routledge. Stone, Bryan P. (1999), “Religion and Violence in Popular Film,” Journal of Religion & Film, 3 (1). Available online: http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol3/iss1/5/ (accessed February 15, 2017). Travors, Ben (2013), “AFI Fest 2013: Steve McQueen Talks ‘12 Years a Slave’,” IndieWire, November 11. Available online: http://www.indiewire.com/2013/11/afi-fest-2013steve-mcqueen-talks-12-years-a-slave-why-he-wants-to-discuss-slavery-now-his-1goal-for-solomon-northrups-story-33110/ (accessed February 15, 2017). Wilkinson, Alissa (2016), “A Conversation with Nate Parker about ‘The Birth of a Nation’,” Christianity Today, August 11. Available online: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ ct/2016/august-web-only/conversation-with-nate-parker-about-birth-of-nation.html (accessed February 15, 2017). Williams, Jesse (2013), “Me Tarzan, You Jane. Me Django, You Chains,” Jesse Williams in a Series of Tubes, February 18. Available online: http://jessehimself.tumblr.com/ post/43450542625/me-tarzan-you-jane-me-django-you-chains (accessed February 15, 2017). Williams, Linda (2001), Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson, rev ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press.

19

Deleuze on Film, and the Bible George Aichele

Gilles Deleuze (1925–95) was professor of philosophy at the University of Paris. In addition to his many philosophical writings are two works on the history and theory of film, Cinema 1: the Movement-Image (1986) and Cinema 2: the Time-Image (1989). Indeed, two chapters of Cinema 1 are devoted to the French philosopher Henri Bergson, and part of another chapter discusses the American philosopher and semiotician Charles S. Peirce. Further discussions of Bergson and Peirce appear in Cinema 2. The following will focus primarily on these two books, but it is impossible to understand Deleuze’s views on cinema without some discussion of his wider philosophical interests, as these appear in his other writings.

The cinema books Deleuze’s general philosophical approach is rigorously empirical and materialistic, with a heavily semiotic orientation. As a result, when he turns to the cinema, he considers it first and foremost as a physical medium that requires specific technologies. The determining conditions of the cinema are the following: not merely the photo, but the snapshot . . .; the equidistance of snapshots; the transfer of this equidistance on to a framework which constitutes the “film” (it was Edison and Dickson who perforated the film in the camera); a mechanism for moving on images (Lumière’s claws). It is in this sense that the cinema is the system which reproduces movement as a function of any-instant-whatever . . . selected so as to create an impression of continuity. (Deleuze 1986: 5)

While this statement may seem obvious, on closer inspection it correlates to important features of Deleuze’s thought that may be far from obvious. Deleuze’s summary omits or glosses a great deal, such as the framing of shots, both inclusion and exclusion of material to be seen, the use of light from natural or artificial sources, matters of focus and exposure, the movement of the camera itself, the developing and augmentation of the image, and much more, and Deleuze pursues



Deleuze on Film, and the Bible

239

these among other related matters in detail in his two cinema books. Film has its own distinctive technological as well as semiotic mechanisms, beginning with the camera and the projector, and movies are perhaps the quintessential mechanically reproduced works of art. Indeed, anyone interested in Deleuze’s understanding of the cinema would do well to study also Walter Benjamin’s essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1968). Film technologies have changed remarkably since Deleuze wrote his books. He wrote them in the early 1980s, before the use of digital imaging devices to decompose and recompose images and recorded sounds had much if any impact on movies. Since then the sequence of snapshots and “Lumière’s claws” have been increasingly replaced by rapidly spinning disks and streams of millions of tiny digital “bits.” In recent years, new movies have been made using combinations of the older analog and new digital technologies, and many “films” (as they are still called) are now produced using digital technology from start to finish. Digital movie cameras were developed in the 1970s but did not become commercially available until the 1980s, and digital cinematography emerged somewhat later. In this light, Deleuze’s understanding of human thought and experience as assemblages of machines that process bits of perception and cognition (see below) anticipates the dawning of the digital revolution in filmmaking, and it is unfortunate that he did not survive to discuss these new cinematic processes and their products. Digitization has also changed the means by which films are distributed and consumed, a matter that is of great interest to Benjamin but that Deleuze did not discuss, as far as I know. Watching a movie used to be a communal, public affair, in large dark halls, and it still is that to some degree. Now the streaming of movies to the individual viewer’s digital device transforms the viewing experience radically, for the movement-image is liberated from the communal quality but also the constraining setting of the local movie theater and the cinematic experience becomes a personal and private matter, despite the large numbers of people required to make a movie. As its subtitle indicates, Cinema 1 examines film as the creation of a “movementimage.” This phrase describes both the practical techniques required by the cinematic medium and the phenomenology of the viewer’s experience (1986: 56–70). Cinema 2 builds upon the observations in the first volume but develops them in relation to the cinematic examination and exploration of time. While Deleuze pays great attention to visual (and auditory) aspects of film, he is cautious, even skeptical, about the cinematic sense of visibility: The movement-image does not reproduce a world, but constitutes an autonomous world, made up of breaks and disproportion, deprived of all its centres, addressing itself as such to a viewer who is in himself no longer centre of his own perception. (1989: 35)

According to Deleuze, “All the powers have an interest in hiding images from us, not necessarily in hiding the same thing from us, but in hiding something in the image” (1989: 20). Furthermore, “A different, virtual mental image would correspond to a different description, and vice versa. .  .  . Each time description has obliterated the

240

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

object, at the same time as the mental image has created a different one” (Deleuze 1989: 44, see also 66–67). Speaking of Pasolini, but with much wider reference, Deleuze notes that the camera does not simply give us the vision of the character and of his world; it imposes another vision in which the first is transformed and reflected. . . . We are caught in a correlation between a perception-image and a camera-consciousness which transforms it. (1986: 74)

Deleuze argues that the movement-image in a film creates a “suspension of the world” through which thought “is brought face to face with its own impossibility, and yet draws from this a higher power of birth” (1989: 163). Similarly, Benjamin says that the distracting element of [a movie] is also primarily tactile, being based on changes of place and focus which periodically assail the spectator. . . . No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it has already changed. It cannot be arrested. . . . The spectator’s process of association in view of these images is indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change. (1968: 238)

In a similar vein, Roland Barthes remarks: The cinema has a power which at first glance the Photograph [Deleuze’s “snapshot”] does not have: the screen (as Bazin has remarked) is not a frame but a hideout; the man or woman who emerges from it continues living: a “blind field” constantly doubles our partial vision. (1981: 55–57)

In contrast to the cinema, Barthes claims that “the Photograph astonishes me, with an astonishment which endures and renews itself, inexhaustibly. . . . This distortion between certainty and oblivion gave me a kind of vertigo” (1981: 82, 85, his emphasis). Barthes’s enduring astonishment is Deleuze’s “vertigo of the simulacrum” (1990: 262, see further below), the oscillation between virtual order and actual disorder that forms a “crystal-image” (1989: 82). Barthes argues that the vertigo caused by the photograph cannot be produced by the cinema, because the movie is too much like ordinary experience (perhaps too “distracting,” as Benjamin says), unlike the unmoving photograph (Barthes 1981: 89–90). The photographic still, even one that freezes high-speed motion, lacks the spell binding images of movement produced by the moving strip of “snapshots.” However, something like this spellbinding quality does appear in prolonged motionless scenes in some movies, such as Chris Marker’s extraordinary film, La Jetée (1962), which emphasizes the snapshot-like qualities of its unmoving images, creating an effect not unlike a stately sequence of tableaux vivants. Marker’s short film consists of nothing but nonmoving images with only one exception, where a tiny movement uncannily disrupts even further the cinematic illusion. In other movies, similar moments may occur when the viewer is jerked out of the “blind field” by other effects of the film itself, such as prolonged black screens or utter silences, onscreen illusions of camera



Deleuze on Film, and the Bible

241

or projector failure, shifts between color and monochrome, actors speaking directly to the camera, and so forth (on these features, see Deleuze 1989: 144, 192–93, 242–47, and 315n38).

Simulation and the real Deleuze’s larger philosophical approach might even describe a cinematic model of consciousness. According to him, our understandings of real things, and indeed the only reality that we know at any given moment—including our own immediate experience—are themselves reciprocally determined by what actually exists and by our ideas or concepts of those things. Deleuze calls these concepts “virtualities” (1994: 205–14), and they are neither unreal nor optional; on the contrary, “The virtual . . . is the characteristic state of Ideas: it is on the basis of its reality that existence is produced, in accordance with a time and a space immanent in the Idea” (1994: 211, emphasis added). For Deleuze, the virtual “Idea” is neither a Platonic form nor an object of consciousness. Instead it is the theater or scene (or screen) in which the meaningful world is staged. “It is possible for the work of art to succeed in inventing these paradoxical hypnotic and hallucinatory sheets whose property is to be at once a past and always to come” (Deleuze 1989: 119). The individual subject is not the unitary atom of the modernist Cartesian self but rather a contingent synthesis that mediates between the virtual and the actual (Deleuze 1994: 253–54). Like culture and history, the human self is an assemblage or product, not a given. Virtuality is a relation to wholeness or totality, and thus it is virtuality that makes possible what logicians and semioticians call sense or connotation. The virtual is “real without being actual, ideal without being abstract” (Deleuze 1994: 208, quoting Proust). Virtual objects correspond to a desire for reality, which “governs and compensates for the progresses and failures of . . . real activity” (1994: 99). Our knowledge of things is derived from empirical sensation, the actions of matter or energy upon our bodies, but there can be no empirical sensation, at least at the human level, that is not informed or processed through virtual structures of consciousness. “Sense appears and is played out at the surface . . . in such a way that it forms letters of dust. It is like a fogged-up window pane on which one can write with one’s finger” (1990: 133). This concept of the virtual undergirds Deleuze’s understanding of simulation and simulacra. Virtuality is the field of the Idea or concept in relation to which reality or truth are understood. The simulacrum is a virtual object that is produced in relation to actual, physical signifiers through contingent syntheses of “singularities” and “intensities,” bits of sensation or consciousness, and these are comparable to the “snapshots” that make up a film, or even better, to the pixels that compose a digital image. This synthesized simulacrum connects the signifiers to a signified (Deleuze 1994: 251–54). The simulacrum appears whenever anything, such as a person or object, but also a character or thing in a story (oral, written, or filmed), becomes meaningful to a viewer or reader. In effect, the theory of simulation cinematizes reality. Conversely, cinematic experience makes it possible to think as Deleuze does. Simulation is “a phenomenon

242

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

which is formed at a certain moment in the development of surfaces” (Deleuze 1990: 216); it “functions in such a way that a certain resemblance is necessarily thrown back onto its basic series and a certain identity projected on the forced movement” (1990: 265). Deleuzean analysis of processes of simulation provides ways in which real people and things can be brought into critical juxtaposition with the fictions of writing and the cinema. His “certain resemblance and identity” of the simulacrum forms the pattern of repetition and difference that creates what Barthes calls the “effect of the real” (1986: 141–48). For example, Moses in The Ten Commandments (DeMille 1956) and Moses in the book of Exodus are two simulacra. Likewise, Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ (Scorsese 1988), Jesus in Kazantzakis’s novel of the same name (1960), and Jesus in the Gospel of Luke are three simulacra. The “historical” or “real” Moses or Jesus, as described by scholars or believers, are yet further simulacra. One cannot say that such simulacra are “the same,” “similar,” or “different” without detailed inspection of the written or filmed (or oral) texts involved and critical decisions about those texts. “The same and the similar no longer have an essence except as simulated, that is as expressing the functioning of the simulacrum. There is no longer any possible selection” (Deleuze 1990: 262, his emphasis). Furthermore, “simulacra are those systems in which different relates to different by means of difference itself. What is essential is that we find in these systems no prior identity, no internal resemblance. .  .  . What is displaced and disguised in the series cannot and must not be identified, but exists and acts as the differenciator of difference” (Deleuze 1994: 299–300, his emphases). The goal of critical analysis in such cases is to identify that which is “displaced and disguised” and to uncover “the differenciator of difference.” This goal can never be fully achieved (as Deleuze says), but it can be approached. Deleuze describes one species of simulacrum as the phantasm: “a phenomenon which is formed at a certain moment in the development of surfaces” (1990: 216). Phantasms “enjoy a high degree of independence with respect to objects and an extreme mobility, or an extreme inconstancy in the images which they form.” Deleuze identifies one type of phantasm as theological. These phantasms “intersect spontaneously in the sky, forming immense images out of the clouds—high mountains and figures of giants” (1990: 275). Theological phantasms are very far from the objects from which they emanate, and having lost with them any direct connection, they form these grand autonomous figures. . . . One might say that they dance, that they speak, that they modify ad infinitum their tones and gestures. (1990: 275–76) Theology is now the science of nonexisting entities, the manner in which these entities . . . animate language and make for it this glorious body. (1990: 281)

Deleuze never mentions “Bible movies,” with the exceptions of Griffith’s Intolerance (1916; Deleuze 1986: 13, 31–32, 148–49; 1989: 104) and Ray’s King of Kings (1961;  Deleuze 1986: 134–36, see also 157), nor does he discuss other movies that refer or allude to biblical texts in that regard. Deleuze clearly admires Pier Paolo



Deleuze on Film, and the Bible

243

Pasolini, but he never mentions Il vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 1964), except for a passing reference in a note (1989: 315n38). He does say that “what characterizes Pasolini’s cinema is a poetic consciousness, which is . . . mystical or ‘sacred’” (1986: 75). However, Deleuze’s comment on Dreyer’s film, La Passion de Jeanne D’Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc 1928), could also describe Pasolini’s Il vangelo: “It is itself Passion . . . and enters into a virtual conjunction with that of Christ” (1986: 108). Pasolini’s Il vangelo is dominated by what Deleuze calls the “affection-image,” seen in the film’s numerous close-ups of the faces of Jesus, his mother, and his disciples and opponents. A film . . . always has one type of image which is dominant: one can speak of an active, perceptive, or affective montage. . . . Three kinds of spatially determined shots can be made to correspond to these three kinds of varieties: the long shot would be primarily a perception-image; the medium shot an action-image; the close-up an affection-image. (1986: 70)

Later he notes that “as its substance [the cinematic close-up] has the compound affect of desire and of astonishment—which gives it life—and the turning aside of faces in the open, in the flesh” (Deleuze 1986: 101). In this regard, Pasolini’s Il vangelo stands in striking contrast to the Gospel of Matthew, in which the sort of thinking or feeling elements that appear in the affection-image are minimal, even in the birth and postresurrection stories (in contrast to the Gospel of Luke at both points). However, long shots or what Deleuze calls perception-images also play important parts in Pasolini’s movie, and at these points it is more closely aligned with the written text of Matthew. Although Deleuze does not discuss specific biblical texts in any detail, he does have interesting things to say about several of them in writings that are not specifically about the cinema. He briefly discusses the book of Revelation in “Nietzsche and Saint Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos” (1997). In A Thousand Plateaus (1987), one of several books that Deleuze coauthored with Félix Guattari (1930–92, a psychoanalyst at the LaBorde clinic), two chapters are devoted to themes of considerable relevance to the Bible (see below). This book is the second in Deleuze and Guattari’s two-volume critique of modern understandings of the self and society, Capitalism and Schizophrenia (the first book is Anti-Oedipus, 1983).

Schizoanalysis and the Bible Along lines similar to Michel Foucault and Michel Serres, Deleuze and Guattari suggest a poststructural historical criticism—that is, a criticism that also critiques the foundational concepts and ideological function of “history” itself (1987: 23). For them, history can no longer be conceived as an objective, linear, and causal sequence lying behind texts (or any human project or product), nor can it be considered an external, impartial standard to which the critic must be responsible. Instead, history is a “partial object” (1983: 309) that is itself assembled or produced in the present by subjective forces of signification and desire.

244

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Deleuze and Guattari call their investigative procedure “schizoanalysis.” They seek in effect to psychoanalyze Western civilization itself, and in particular to analyze the fascination of the modern Western world with totalitarianism, “to show how, in the subject who desires, desire can be made to desire its own repression” (1983: 105). Desire flows freely—“desire is revolutionary in its essence” (1983: 116)—but desire is also bound to its own subjection. Schizoanalysis examines interlinked series of oppositions. These oppositions do not constitute logical or binary contraries or contradictories, such as good/bad, true/false, or real/unreal, for which both of the opposed elements could not be truly predicated of any one subject. Instead, for these oppositions “each [element] takes nourishment from the other, borrows from the other” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 423). The elements in each pair continually arise out of and inevitably collapse back into one another, for the identity of each element is continually deconstructed by the potential within it of its own “other.” Deleuze also defines the simulacrum as “the instance which includes a difference within itself, such as (at least) two divergent series on which it plays, all resemblance abolished so that one can no longer point to the existence of an original and a copy” (1994: 69). “If the simulacrum still has a model, it is another model, a model of the Other, from which there flows an internalized dissemblance” (Deleuze 1990: 258). According to Deleuze and Guattari, actual material existence is not a pure or absolute state, but it is the point at which opposed elements become one another: “a pivot . . . a frontier . . . a naked full body” (1983: 281). Actual material objects must be presupposed for any thought or utterance whatsoever, but they can only be encountered within an already-coded system of oppositions (Foucault’s episteme). In other words, material existence can only be understood in terms of what it is not, that is, as a system of virtualities. This system is a “signifying regime” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 140) through which meaningless bodies are organized into meaningful organisms, such as the self, human society, or the larger world. The production of reality occurs when language carves material existence into a signifying regime. Specific cultural praxes or “desiring-machines” continually “territorialize” the uncoded material stuff of existence into meaningful elements. Desiring-machines work by encoding or decoding the endless flow of uncoded matter. The sign-system of language is itself one of these desiring-machines, and it encodes this uncoded material into mythical or scientific objects that we can understand and describe. However, the linguistic symbol “is never in a one-to-one relationship with what it means, but always has a multiplicity of referents” (Deleuze and Guattari 1983: 181). Such symbols are both the product of desiring-machines and also themselves desiring-machines. In this way, Deleuze and Guattari pursue Peirce’s notion of unlimited semiosis, for which there is no final or ultimate signified (meaning, content) to bring the signifying flow to a stop. Every sign is a machine, an articulation of signifying desire (another machine) and signified object (yet another machine), a coupling that is also a break or interruption in the flow of semiosis. Actual material existence is never completely encoded. Some portion of the material flow is always uncoded and uncodable, and it escapes the desiring-machines (Deleuze and Guattari 1983: 163, 173). Furthermore, every signifying regime encodes



Deleuze on Film, and the Bible

245

bodies that will eventually be “deterritorialized” (decoded) and then “reterritorialized” (recoded) into different regimes. “It is the displacement of the limit that haunts all societies, the displaced represented that disfigures what all societies dread absolutely as their most profound negative: namely, the decoded flows of desire” (1983: 177). The limitations inherent in the coded flows result in their failure to signify and even sometimes in the breakdown of the signifying regime itself. Deleuze and Guattari examine “plateaus” (1987: 158, following Gregory Bateson) in which opposed elements in the regimes shift and transform into one another. “A plateau is always in the middle, not at the beginning or the end” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 21). Different signifying regimes dominate different eras and peoples. The desiring-machines also vary from one signifying regime to another, but the play of oppositions that they embody remains constant. Deleuze and Guattari apply the terms “paranoia” and “schizophrenia” not merely to personal identity, but also (and especially) to signifying regimes. Paranoia is the extreme concentration of identity, and schizophrenia is the extreme dispersion of identity. Any closed or conclusive exchange of messages belongs to a paranoid regime, and all languages, as inherently unifying and totalitarian signifying systems, tend toward paranoia. However, any signifying regime also opens up (as its inherent other) the possibility of a “postsignifying regime” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 119) that is characterized by a mixed semiotic in which various combinations of signifying regimes appear. A postsignifying regime will value multiplicity and diversity, and therefore it will tend toward schizophrenia. For Deleuze and Guattari, only a postsignifying regime fully celebrates creativity and freedom. Related to Deleuze and Guattari’s opposition between signifying and postsignifying regimes is their opposition between the “nomadic war machine” and the “State apparatus.” The centered, unified, and paranoid State is opposed to the dispersed, mobile, and schizophrenic nomads (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 373–75). The “war machine” of the nomads is their drive toward “a creative line of flight, a smooth space of displacement” (1987: 423), and it only becomes military or totalitarian when it is appropriated and controlled by the State. When this happens in the capitalist world, the result is “total war” and fascism, which is war against the “unspecified enemy.” Deleuze and Guattari do not say as much, but schizoanalysis is directly relevant to biblical studies. Their own schizoanalyses explore in detailed, nonsequential histories several signifying regimes, including the Second Temple of the Jews (1987: 111–48) and the face of Christ (1987: 167–91). The “Jewish semiotic” of the Bible is a mixed semiotic, combining both nomadic and State-signifying regimes, and thus “bearing witness” to a postsignifying regime (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 122–23). This postsignifying regime appears in structures of prophecy and election in the Bible. The prophets give voice to a nomadic machine, and the State apparatus appears in kings and temple institutions (1987: 383). A covenant crisis results from the destruction of the signifying regime centered upon the Temple in Jerusalem. The paradox of the Jewish semiotic unites betrayal and faith: faith betrays, even as betrayal keeps faith. In figures such as Cain and Jonah, much like the Greek Oedipus, the postsignifying paradox appears as a deterritorializing “double turning away on a line of flight” (1987: 123–24). The paranoia of the signifying regime is transformed through the faith-as-

246

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

betrayal of biblical characters into a “face-off,” a turning away of the signifying face or de-signifying of the signifier, and ultimately a postsignifying “de-facializing” (1987: 190). Christianity combines the mixed Jewish semiotic with the Roman imperial (State, paranoid) regime, resulting in a new mixture, yet another betrayal and yet another faith. In the Tower of Babel story, the desire of nomadic people who migrate to the plain of Shinar is for a State. “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves” (Gen. 11:4, RSV). The paranoid desire for a name leads these people inexorably to the dispersion of confused tongues as well as geographical scattering with which the story concludes. The attempt to territorialize, in the form of a city and a tower, leads to the loss of meaningful language and extreme deterritorialization. In the New Testament, this structure is mirrored and inverted in the Pentecost story of the reterritorialization of the flows of desire. People gather “from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5, 9-11) to one centralized place when they hear tongues speaking a single message, “the mighty works of God” (Acts 2:11). The distributed tongues of fire and schizophrenic speech in many tongues (Acts 2:3-4) are totalized in Peter’s speech into a fulfillment and final meaning for the Jewish scriptures. Writing or scripture, as the deterritorialization of oral tradition, becomes the verbal sign that then leads eventually to the biblical canon as the reterritorializing of God (Deleuze and Guattari 1983: 206). “The book assures the deterritorialization of the world, but the world effects a reterritorialization of the book, which in turn deterritorializes itself in the world” (1987: 11). The one, paranoid canon that emerges centuries after the texts were written is composed of many divergent texts, but what appears to be controlled signification may at any time give way to unlimited semiosis. Some of the biblical books—perhaps the vast majority—are dominated by paranoid tendencies, but others such as Job, Jonah, or Ecclesiastes are strongly schizophrenic, challenging the prevailing orthodoxies of the Torah or Chronicles. The postsignifying paradox also appears in the Jesus simulacra of the gospels. These figures signify a failure to signify within the mixed Jewish semiotic itself, and thus they also emphasize the faith/betrayal paradox: “He betrays the God of the Jews, he betrays the Jews, he is betrayed by God, he is betrayed by Judas” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 124). “Christ himself botched the crossing, the jump, he bounced off the wall” of the signifier (1987: 187, their emphasis). However, a paranoid signifying regime reappears in the totalitarian figure of “Christ the Lord” (perhaps most vividly in New Testament texts such as Jude or 2 Peter, but also in Acts 2:22-36).

Conclusion In contemporary global popular culture, the constant possibility of new postsignifying regimes and many different mixed semiotics brings with it new ways to read the biblical texts, including films that reference those texts in a wide variety of ways. However, the vast majority of “Bible movies,” as well as many other movies in which biblical texts are referenced, simply reaffirm the prevailing paranoid signifying regime of Western capitalism, and increasingly of the entire modern world. Only a few films, and often



Deleuze on Film, and the Bible

247

the less popular ones (both with general audiences and with Bible and film scholars), suggest the schizophrenic lines of flight that characterize a postsignifying regime. No doubt this disparity is largely because of the mass-market forces that drive popular culture and the mechanically reproduced works of art that both Deleuze and Benjamin have described.

Works cited An extensive bibliography of works by Deleuze appears in Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 579–85. Barthes, Roland (1981), Camera Lucida, trans. Richard Howard, New York: Hill and Wang. Barthes, Roland (1986), The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Benjamin, Walter (1968), “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations, 217–51, trans. Harry Zohn, New York: Schocken. Deleuze, Gilles (1986), Cinema 1: the Movement-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles (1989), Cinema 2: the Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta, London: Continuum. Deleuze, Gilles (1990), The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester and Charles Stivale, New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles (1994), Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles (1997), “Nietzsche and Saint Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos,” in Essays Critical and Clinical, 36–52, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari (1983), Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari (1987), A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Kazantzakis, Nikos (1960), The Last Temptation of Christ, trans. P. A. Bien, New York: Simon and Schuster.

20

There’s a New Messiah in Town: The Messianic in the Western Robert Paul Seesengood and Richard Walsh

Looking for cinematic Christ figures Once the bread-and-butter of Bible and film scholarship, Christ-figure analyses remain popular. Those who still advocate such approaches take great pains to legitimate their interpretations (see, e.g., Baugh 1997: 109–12; Kozlovic 2004; Walsh 2013; Reinhartz 2013: 148–74). They do so because other academics roundly deride Christ-figure analyses. Academic contempt for Christ-figure analyses has only grown as Bible and film interpretations have grown more sophisticated. Indeed, Christ-figure analyses are beset by problems (see Deacy 2006; Walsh 2013). Theology is often so prominent that Christ-figure approaches often fail to interpret films holistically and/or cinematically. As the interpreter’s theology is the normative standard, rather peculiar interpretations—from the perspective of film criticism— often occur. Not surprisingly, such interpretations often interest only those readers whose apologetics or theology they serve. Such analyses tend to abandon the analytical for the homiletic and apologetic. Most critically, Christ-figure interpretations make Jesus Christ too important. They make Jesus Christ into the standard by which characters and films are evaluated.1 Consequently, one member of a class (Jesus Christ) defines the entire group (cinematic heroes). The approach is obviously wrongheaded as any cinematic character— including any Jesus—is created/constructed according to existing templates. Not only are the cinematic Jesuses and any so-called Christ figures all modern heroes, many also become generic biopic heroes—and thus simply other versions of the great man/ woman (on the biopic Jesus, see Reinhartz 2007). This heroic template—not one particular figure (even Jesus Christ)—dominates cinematic character construction.2 In a defense of Christ-figure analyses, Anton Kozlovic makes a similar observation, but reaches a different conclusion. He surmises that he can identify so many cinematic Christ figures because of the way script writing is taught (2004). Aspiring scriptwriters use primers indebted to Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces (1972). Instead of claiming then that any so-called Christ figures are simply an example of generic quest-heroes, Kozlovic claims Campbell’s generic hero becomes a Christ figure in film



There’s a New Messiah in Town: The Messianic in the Western

249

because Christ is the Western cultural hero. We are not quite willing to take this last step. Therefore, and without subscribing to Campbell’s questionable universalizing analysis, we see cinematic Jesuses and (so-called) Christ figures as part of a larger class of cinematic heroes.

The messianic In contrast, the basic assumption and ultimate claim in Christ-figure analyses is that Jesus Christ is unique. The very designation “Christ,” however, says otherwise. As everyone knows, “Christ” transliterates the Greek christos, which, in turn, translates the Hebrew maschiach (pl. maschiachot) or “anointed.” The term appears commonly in the Hebrew Bible and refers most often to the divinely chosen king— although also to objects, priests, prophets, and even to Cyrus (Isa. 45:1). Indeed, the common idea of maschiach—a chosen, divine, foretold figure who suffers vicariously to atone for sin and defeat death—is practically the only iteration of “anointed one” that does not directly appear in the Hebrew Bible. Although many modern critics immediately interpret the messianic in film as Jesus Christ, the reader of the Hebrew Bible encountering “anointed” must process the term: An anointed what? Anointed by whom? With what? To what end? Biblically, “messiah” is nothing if not multivalent (see Charlesworth 2009). According to Thomas Thompson, a messiah myth, which serves as template for biblical portrayals of Moses, David, and Jesus, appears throughout the Ancient Near East (2005: 55, 59). Thompson finds in ancient stele recording the deeds of various kings a common story in which the saving king reverses hard times through victories and judgments. The king also typically restores or reforms proper worship (2005: 155–56). Not surprisingly, Thompson finds numerous connections between this story and the creation-through-conflict myth, which also appears widely in the Ancient Near East (2005: 179). The savior king vanquishes cosmic evil to return creation to its original order (2005: 198; compare the roles of kingly figures in Isaiah and in the royal Psalms). Christ/messiah Jesus is not unique. Jesus is a messiah, but certainly not the Messiah. Even in the New Testament canon, the definition of “messiah” varies. When the gospels describe Jesus as messiah/Christ, they employ serious hermeneutical gymnastics. Mark, for example, escapes the problem of its Jesus’s un-messianic nature by shifting Jesus’s “anointing” from coronation to burial (Mk 14:8).3 John acts more decisively. John’s Jesus knows, “My kingdom is not from this world” (18:36). Such messianic evasions nicely cohere with subsequent Christian spiritualizing, but they depart radically from the establishment of or (imminent) hope for justice and peace. The various gospel Jesuses do not make very good messiahs. They do not restore the fortunes of their people. Thompson’s messiah and the kings of the royal Psalms would have trounced the enemies standing in the way of their this-worldly kingdoms—or they would not have been memorialized. Despite the gospels’ portrayals of their Jesuses as victims—and their failures as messiahs—the gospels and New Testament texts do associate violence more closely with

250

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

their Jesuses than most cinematic Christ-figure interpreters seem to notice. Swords are the gospel Jesus’s métier (see Mt. 10:34; Lk. 22:38) and, at his arrest, the gospel Jesus objects to being treated as a leisten (Mk 14:48; Mt. 26:55, Lk. 22:52). Leisten has the dual meaning of “robber, highwayman, bandit” or “revolutionary, insurrectionist, guerilla.” For historians of first-century Judaism and Jesus, the distinction between messiah, revolutionary, and outlaw is hardly absolute (see, e.g., Horsley 1995; Seesengood and Koosed 2013: 13–41, 61–87).4 The messiah (claimant) is an outlaw.5 Like the American West, first-century Galilee was a frontier state (Horsley 1995: 276); it had a history of bandit and messianic movements largely because, according to Horsley, any “stabilized and legitimate definition of ‘law and order’” was lacking (Horsley 1995: 262). Consequently, “who viewed whom as ‘outlaw’” constituted “a fluid relationship among the people, tradition, and rivals for power in Jerusalem” (Horsley 1995: 263). In short, one person’s messiah is another’s outlaw and vice versa. As in cinematic Westerns, where bandits and Indians6 are on the edge of law and order and thus inhuman or quasi-human, biblical messiahs live as hybrid or quasihumans in a space beyond civilization and law. They intrude into human civilization as obstacle, impediment, chaos, and the possibility of justice. They hybridize wildness and the human. In this messiah/outlaw context, the common theological denunciation of Christ figures who employ violence to restore justice projects a highly stylized (pacifist) image of Jesus Christ as the messianic standard. Such images serve an important purpose. They are integral to the construction of modern liberal or religious identities that shunt religion safely away from the social-political realm to the private, subjective, or spiritual (see Walsh 2012). Christ-figuring locates film and its heroes in this safe religious location. By contrast, the notion of hero or, better, “messiah,” particularly given a messiah’s “outlaw” associations, locates film and its heroes culturally and politically. To call a character “Christ” resolves matters too neatly; the film becomes subsidiary to a theological or ecclesial evaluation. It becomes theodicy or homily. “Messiah” leaves interpretation open (see Twomey 2007). One must attend to the film itself to see if its implications are theological (the Christ) or political (king, messiah, outlaw) or some hybrid of both.7 “Messiah” also foregrounds the interpreter and her agenda. As Morton Smith said long ago, “magician” and “son of god” (read “Christ”) are labels that reveal more about the labeler than the labeled (1978). Given the biblical and historical multivalence of “messiah,” the messianic as it appears in some continental poststructuralist scholars is quite intriguing. They point to the messianic as an uncertain opening, something outside Law: Well, what remains irreducible to any deconstruction, what remains as undeconstructible as the possibility itself of deconstruction is, perhaps, a certain experience of the emancipatory promise; it is perhaps even the formality of a structural messianism, a messianism without religion, even a messianic without messianism, an idea of justice—which we distinguish from law or right and even from human rights—and an idea of democracy—which we distinguish from its current concept and from its determined predicates today [permit me to refer here to “Force of Law” and The Other Heading]. (Derrida 1994: 74)



There’s a New Messiah in Town: The Messianic in the Western

251

Following Walter Benjamin ([1940] 1968), and with his typical deconstructionist flair, Derrida traces possibilities in which the specter of Marx (not biblical or, as he says, “Abrahamic messiahs”) haunts neo-capitalist modernity.8 For Derrida, history is shifted by the specter-messiah; it is narrative response to haunting. Walter Benjamin’s own famous “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” very likely among his last written work, critiques historical teleology and progressivism (as he reads some versions of historical materialism) in favor of a “true” historical materialism that looks for an unpredictable moment, an in-breaking, a “Messianic cessation of happening” that will reconfigure the past (thesis 17). His conceptualizing is redolent with religion/theology (see thesis 1):9 In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious. (thesis 6; Benjamin’s emphasis)

Giorgio Agamben, also following Benjamin, describes the messianic as an in-breaking into history that elides barriers of law and radical freedom. The messianic breaks into time from outside of time resolving the demand of the present by allusion to the past, enabling a future hybridizing law and the unlawful/grace (Agamben 2004). If a figure incarnates this in-breaking, he/she is not simply a stranger from afar; he/she is, very literally, an outlaw.

There is a new messiah in town: The messianic in/and the American Western Of course, when hunting for outlaws bringing swift (violent) justice, the best terrain is the legendary American West. Cowboys, Indians, and outlaws are (or, at least, once were) as iconic as Jesus Christ in American national mythology.10 Westerns nostalgically celebrate wildness, the frontier as it faces the inexorable march of civilization (see Schatz 1981). The resulting tensions produce a liminal protagonist, caught between the political and the savage, the lawful and the bandit, the civil and the wild. This hybrid figure watches the growth of cities from his mount on the edge of wildness and “strikes a romantic pose even in the face of extinction” (Schatz 1981: 31). The outlaw and the Indian both represent themes similar to the biblical messiah and to the postmodern messianic. When the outlaw/Indian are a Western’s protagonists, they also often bring justice (law), domestication, and balanced power. Like biblical messiahs, they ask us to tease out their precise meaning, their relationship to kingdoms of justice and peace, to questions of inside and outside, of civility and wildness, of human-ness. They are not simple, stable Christ figures; like Jesus Christ, they belong to a larger class; they are messianic. To explore the messianic more fully, we turn here to an analysis of two Westerns, a classic and a recent release, to Shane (1953) and to The Revenant (2015).

252

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

The outlaw messiah: Shane Many consider the movie Shane, based on Jack Schaefer’s ([1949] 1966) novel of the same name, second only to John Ford’s 1939 Stagecoach as the archetypal Western. Matthew Carter argues, more grandly: Shane is an archetypal Western . . . the classical Western, in fact, an overtly mythic distillation of the historical migration of Anglo-American pioneers. Set in the days before the 1890 census effectively erased the “frontier” Shane celebrates the “winning of the west” and the emergent civilization at the same time it mourns the loss of the sense of freedom and individualism that the frontier supposedly engendered. (Carter 2014: 29)

Shane opens with a view of the Wyoming high plains; the impassive mountains in the background frame nearly every outdoor shot. The establishing landscape shot renders the film’s tensions immediately: a small, subsistence farm lies adjacent to expansive pasture, and both are hemmed-in by impassive mountains. The land is beautiful and fertile, but finite. Civilization is tenuous and tiny. Shane arrives out of the wilderness to this farm, the Starrett’s, on his way “north.” Joe, Marian, and their boy Joey warmly accept him. Shane is clearly an outlaw, dressed in buckskins, proficient with the pearl-gripped revolver that he wears outside his coat. He is a Man. He trains Joey in shooting (something Joey’s father has never had time to do). He is casual with violence. “A gun is a tool,” he tells Marian. The Starrett farm and their neighbors face more than nature’s hardships. The cattleman Rufus Ryker wants to drive out these homesteaders. Though they have government claims, Ryker insists that he and his generation have the moral rights to the pasture. They fought the elements and the Indians to claim their space; many (indeed, most) died. Therefore, he resents government encroachment on his land. He is not afraid to use the violence he has learned. Joe Starrett, the farmers’ spokesman, rejects Ryker’s moral claim of priority; others preceded Ryker in this land, and, more importantly, his vision is not sustainable. The West’s future lies in families who settle and raise sons “strong and straight.” With the nearest marshal a hundred miles away, Starrett organizes the farmers to resist Ryker. Shane is the wildcard, the messianic opening, the one outside the law; he is a man of an earlier order. Having signed on as Starrett’s hired hand, he agrees to negotiate the hazards of going to town for supplies where he soon establishes he will stand up and fight back if challenged. His skill at violence helps him against Ryker’s men, but these very skills mark him as an outsider, not a farmer. He has arrived, however, with the hope of a new life and sees what might-have-been as he watches Marian and Joey. Perhaps, it still could be—if there were no Joe. Matters escalate when Ryker hires a gunman, Jack Wilson, who provokes and kills Stonewall, the most outspoken farmer. Ryker then sets up an ambush to deal with Shane. To prevent Joe from a suicidal challenge to Wilson, Shane knocks Joe unconscious, saving his life and honor, and rides to town alone. The final confrontation between the gunfighters is swift and fatal. Joey witnesses the entire duel and saves Shane’s life



There’s a New Messiah in Town: The Messianic in the Western

253

when his shouts reveal a hidden gunman. Shane, wounded but victorious, rides away. Joey follows him outside to the edge of the prairie, leaving the dead behind. As Shane reaches the mountains, the film shifts to heavy filter, a sepia tinged black-and-white, and Shane’s shadow disappears into the landscape. Like a specter, he returns to the wild (and the past). Shane dispatches one set of bandits, but the conflicts and violence are hardly resolved. As Shane leaves, Joey shouts the film’s last lines: “Shane Come back! Come Back! We need you!” Indeed, they do. Violence will almost certainly reoccur, and more blood will be shed. The coming social changes will produce even more disorientation. Shane will not come back. Needed, he remains stubbornly absent. Wounded in the final duel, it is unclear if Shane will even survive. At any rate, the psychic wounds reopened by his return to violence are too acute. Shane is a redeemer figure. But is he a Christ figure? Clint Eastwood, in his re-visioning of Shane in Pale Rider (1985), answers in the affirmative, and others have agreed: In both film and novel, the justice-bringing gun fighter, Shane, is widely argued by many to be Christological (if not a flagrant Christ-type). He arrives mysteriously. He seems to have special powers of perception, and he has an ennobling effect upon those around him. He suffers vicariously for the redemption of the community. He brings Justice and (divine?) retributive punishment. He vanishes at the end of his redemptive task. He unites love and security with justice and discipline.11 (Seesengood 2016: 194)

Others dissent, troubled by Shane’s violence and arguing that even vicarious suffering is not a sufficient parallel to Jesus Christ. Shane is more clearly messianic. He is an unexpected deliverer. He comes from “elsewhere” and returns to the same. He is violent, but his violence establishes a new order (however temporary). He makes Starrett’s dream of the “strong and straight” (note the similarities to hopes for kingdoms of justice and peace) at least a possibility. But, he clearly also entertains hopes of his own “redemption”: One could tease out another aspect of Shane’s character which is not befitting his role as all-American hero. There is a strong possibility that Shane may well be a violent outlaw on a self-imposed path of redemption. It is telling that redemption for such a figure can come only through exile and (possibly) death. (Carter 2014: 69)

Again, Shane is messianic, but now bandit, an outlaw, in search of redemption, which lies in an ordinary life. Much like the Jesus of The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Shane is not tempted by glory, wealth, or fame, but by home, hearth, and family.12 Unfortunately, “he ain’t no farmer.” He cannot quite fit civilized spaces. He is redeemer, empowered by past violence and lawlessness. He must be the hero or be elsewhere. He is bandit and rebel (his last words to Wilson are the insult “you’re a damned lying Yankee”), but he is also messianic, saving the weak and ushering in a new age, though one in which he, as a man outside Law, does not have a part other than harbinger.

254

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Indians in/as messianic challenge to empire: The Revenant Jane Tompkins argues the Western justifies the violent conquest of Native peoples and the environmental degradation and species extinctions that went along with the “civilizing” of the West (1992). The Indian embodies the hostile forces of nature but also allegorizes human intrusion. The Indian, too, is outlaw: “The role of savage is more or less interchangeable between Indians or outlaws since both groups are associated . . . with lawlessness, a love of violence, and rejection of . . . a settled way of life” (Cawelti 1975: 35). But, like the outlaw, the Indian is not just the outside/other, the Indian is also the embodied frontier. Indians are the anti-civil, always present in implicit threats of chaos. Yet they are also a form of civilization, and their subjugation exposes the perversion of law as much as it reinforces its necessity (Carter 2014: 54). Nonetheless, Westerns often erase Indians, casting whites in leading roles and reducing Indians to extras, “doodles in the margin of the film”; they are “props, bits of local color, textual effects” (Tompkins 1992: 8–9). Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2015 The Revenant (based on Michael Punke’s 2002 book of the same title) takes a different tack. Indians play a pivotal, transformative role. The grimy, violent, affective film is at times difficult to watch. It is essentially about the human struggle to survive against the forces of nature and human violence. A short pretitle sequence, later expanded with more information, indicates Hugh Glass’s Pawnee family (and village) was destroyed by French soldiers. Cradling his badly injured son, Glass tells him: “As long as you can still grab a breath you fight. You breathe . . . keep breathing.” Later, after Glass is left at the edge of death by a horrific grizzly bear attack, his son Hawk repeats this lesson to him. The film’s final shot—much, much later—is of Glass’s traumatized face and the sound, as the screen goes black, of his continued labored breathing. After the tragedy of the Pawnee-prologue, which only Hawk and Glass survive, the film proper opens with Glass leading Captain Henry’s fur-trapping party in the remote wilderness. Almost immediately, an Arikara war party attacks and decimates the party. This Arikara attack catalyzes the movie’s action—and also responds at least metaphorically to the pre-title massacre. In a reversal of John Ford’s famous 1956 The Searchers, these Indians are in search of their chief 's daughter Powaqa who has been kidnapped by white men. The Arikara seek her and justice, raiding and killing as they go.13 Glass survives this attack too and leads the survivors of the trapping party in-country toward civilization (Fort Kiowa) as they try desperately to out-march the Arikara pursuit. Shortly, Glass, while hunting for food, is savagely attacked by a grizzly bear. Although he miraculously survives, yet again, he is near death and his associates decide they must leave him behind to save themselves. Captain Henry pays Fitzgerald (and Bridger) to stay behind with Glass (and Hawk) and give him a proper burial. When Glass does not die quickly enough, Fitzgerald attempts to euthanize him, calling it a sacrament. When Hawk discovers them, Fitzgerald kills Hawk and convinces Bridger to join him and leave Glass—although still breathing—in a shallow grave. Remarkably, Glass keeps breathing. He rises from his grave and begins his trek for (continued) life. Now, however, the survival story becomes a quest to avenge his son’s murder (he scrawls “Fitzgerald killed my son” on various surfaces) and his own



There’s a New Messiah in Town: The Messianic in the Western

255

betrayal. Amid numerous near-death escapes, Glass encounters a lone Pawnee brave Hikuc who saves Glass from starvation. Hikuc also reminds Glass that he must not take revenge into his own hands; revenge belongs to the Creator. While Glass suffers from a fever, marauding French trappers hang the sagacious Hikuc. After he recovers, Glass sneaks into the French camp in the night to steal a horse and discovers the abducted Powaqa whom he helps to escape. The Arikara search party, which has almost captured Glass several times, then attacks the French. A French survivor makes it to Fort Kiowa. Because he has a canteen belonging to either Hawk or Glass, Captain Henry leads a search party and finds Glass. When they return to the fort, Fitzgerald has already escaped into the wilderness. Shortly, Glass leaves to search for Fitzgerald and bring him to justice. At the climax of their final confrontation—a brutal, exhausting, primal struggle—Glass looks up to see the Arikara search party, now reunited with Powaqa. Glass recalls Hikuc’s warning about revenge and sends the mortally wounded Fitzgerald into the river to be swept downstream into Indian hands. The Indians scalp him alive and send his body on downstream. Departing, they pass by Glass without a word. While the pace of The Revenant is breath-taking and unusual, it exploits the familiar Western tensions between nature and civilization and reflects on human evil and violence. As is typical of many Westerns, Indians provide the constant background threat. They—like the bands of trappers they encounter—are hybrids between civil and savage, communal and wild. Glass and Hawk are also hybrids moving between the two worlds, adeptly translating between multiple worlds and spaces. The Indians drive the plot and offer commentary on the Europeans, depicting them as treacherous, savage, and violent. By contrast, Indian violence in The Revenant is redemptive. It is undertaken to rescue (a daughter) and to punish. The Arikara chief gives a speech about the European oppression of the Arikara that any first-century Jewish revolutionary/messiah/outlaw would have understood. The film’s frequent Christian language is almost all from the villainous Fitzgerald. He justifies his attempt to euthanize Glass as a sacrament, a vicarious atonement that will save others. When Bridger worries about the morality of leaving Glass behind, Fitzgerald says that they are on a path of God’s choosing; it is not their place to wonder.14 When they arrive at the fort, Fitzgerald warns Bridger not to grow a conscience, lies about Glass’s Christian burial, and collects his “Judas” money. Nestled between these two scenes is the Pawnee Hikuc’s messianic appearance to Glass. Hikuc feeds the starving Glass, relates the murder of his own family, but recalls the Pawnee wisdom that revenge is solely the Creator’s. During a storm, Hikuc builds a steam lodge so the feverish Glass can heal from gangrenous infection. When Glass emerges from the lodge, after various “religious” visions (and still more resurrection imagery), he finds Hikuc hung, with a placard: “on est tous des savages” (we are all savages). Indeed. Indian violence avenges Hawk’s death and Glass’s betrayal when the Arikara scalp Fitzgerald (who has already survived a previous scalping). When the Arikara leave, baptizing Fitzgerald’s body in the stream, in water and in the blood, to pass “over Jordan.” Fitzgerald’s blood stains the snow, but is washed away in the end, along with his remains. Revenge belongs to the hands of the Creator, Hikuc said and Glass learns. Revenge in The Revenant is taken by the father figure of the Arikara chief. He settles

256

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

the guilt debt and takes the “sin” from Glass’s hands. One could argue that Glass is a Christ figure.15 Without question, he returns from the dead to bring justice. In fact, his many resurrections become somewhat wearisome. Jesus Christ, however, is not the only literary character who has come back from the dead seeking revenge. Indeed, the film’s title, The Revenant, recalls the undead, restless spirits of legend and horror. The title then distinguishes Glass from Jesus Christ. He is not a Christ figure. As Glass says before the final confrontation with Fitzgerald, he has already died. Fitzgerald asks him, when they finally stand face-to-face, “You come all this way back . . . for what?” Glass has no life; he only breathes; he is truly undead, existing among visions and the voices of his departed family; he is not resurrected. Moreover, it is the Indians in The Revenant who are messianic.16 Their arrival harkens the new order of things. They are the hybrids between inside/outside, wild/civil, natural and human worlds that change things. They bring the justice of the Creator, then vanish.

Messiahs outside the law Agamben’s arrival of the messianic is a moment of utter intrusion fusing Bios and Zoe, the re-creation of the idealized life. Messiahs haunt fractured history as the object of ambiguous longings and vague cravings. Resurrected or not, they are inherently spectral. Messiahs establish justice by alteration of Law or by its contradiction. In doing so, they redefine Law and Life and effect salvation. They are in/a-humans, hybrids and specters. Agamben begins The Open (2004) by reflecting upon an illuminated Medieval Hebrew manuscript depicting the great Messianic Banquet at time’s end. Those who eat are anthropomorphic: they have human bodies but animal heads. As the remnant of Israel, they embody the messianic fusion of human and animal, natural and affected. In Westerns, Indians and outlaws assume similar intermediary, sub/supra/posthuman status. They are anarchic and destructive. Sometimes, as in Shane and The Revenant, they are messianic—surprising, interruptive outsiders, who bring new justice and judgment. Doing so, they comment upon the nature of civility and wildness, upon adolescence and maleness—and upon human-ness. They show the limits of civilization and of justice which they disrupt. They are violent in ways civilization cannot contain. Shane and the Arikara must remain in the wilderness. Indians and outlaws may intimate Christ, but they are better seen as messiahs or even the messianic, that larger hope to which Jesus also belongs. They stubbornly evade facile identification as Christ figures. Messiahs are too new, too exterior, for such traditional naming. We do not yet know what they are or how they reconfigure the world.

Notes 1 They also often assume that a (portrait of) Jesus Christ is the (one and only) Jesus Christ. 2 Film also constructs its heroes syncretistically. For example, Neo in The Matrix (1999) may be a Christ figure, but he is also bodhisattva, martial arts warrior, Plato’s philosopher, and Alice in Wonderland. See Walsh (2013).



There’s a New Messiah in Town: The Messianic in the Western

257

3 A dying king is not unheard of in ancient mythology, but such a death (and resurrection) typically rights the world in ways that the gospels cannot affirm given the ongoing Roman Empire. Scholars generally acknowledge Mark’s failure to depict Jesus successfully as messiah when they resort to the creation of the so-called messianic secret (and then attribute that creation to Mark). 4 Seesengood and Koosed (2013) compare David, Jesus, and Jesse James as outlaw redeemers. 5 If the gospels and their subsequent interpreters were more forthright about this intimate connection between messiah and outlaw, Jesus’s gospel opponents might appear less villainous. While we might still quail at the realpolitik, we might read Mt. 2:16-18, Jn 11:49, and the gospel trial narratives quite differently. 6 Here and throughout this essay we use “Indian” rather than “Native American” as we refer to a particular character-class within genre fiction. “Indians” are a genre construct that no more correspond to real-life humans than do elves or orcs. 7 In popular culture and film, messiah often means “nut job.” See Walsh (2013) for a discussion of films that imply such a “Christ” and for others that call attention to the power of the crowd/media in labeling someone a “Christ.” 8 Derrida’s messianic is “the coming of the other, the absolute and unpredictable singularity of the arrivant as justice. We believe that this messianic remains an ineffaceable mark—a mark one neither can nor should efface—of Marx’s legacy, and doubtless of inheriting, of the experience of inheritance in general” (1994: 33). 9 The language is akin to discussions of hierophany or mysterium tremendum. 10 Scholars understand Westerns as a form of American (etiological) myth, exploring identity, gender, and space. They are not in as much agreement about how Westerns do that. For discussion and references, see Koosed and Linafelt (1996), Seesengood and Koosed (2013), Carter (2014), and Seesengood (2016). 11 The Jesus Christ implications are more obvious in Schaefer’s ([1949] 1966) novel than in the film. On Shane as Christ-figure film, see also Walsh (2003: 156–62, 171); and the references therein. 12 Although he only intimates the possibilities, Ryker is the one who observes most clearly that Shane could take Joe’s place with his “pretty wife.” Shane reacts angrily and dismissively. 13 In an important scene, the Arikara chief takes horses from a French party after a conversation in which the chief, speaking French, dismisses French protestations about honor and, speaking Arikara, lists the things stolen from the Arikara by the French: land, animals, my daughter. 14 Fitzgerald’s ultimate religious lesson comes from his father who almost starved to death in the wilderness, but found God—a squirrel, which he killed and ate. 15 One could also argue that Hikuc is a Christ figure, as he miraculously “saves” Glass and is hung, complete with placard. 16 Fitzgerald’s theological musings and language imply an ironic critique of Christ-figuring: only he constructs Glass as Christ figure, a sacrament, a vicarious sacrifice—and for his own benefit, of course.

Works cited Agamben, Giorgio (2004), The Open: Man and Animal, trans. Kevin Attell, Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

258

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Baugh, Lloyd (1997), Imaging the Divine: Jesus and Christ-Figures in Film, Kansas City: Sheed & Ward. Benjamin, Walter ([1940] 1968), “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, 253–64, New York: Schocken. Campbell, Joseph (1972), Hero with a Thousand Faces, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Carter, Matthew (2014), Myth of the Western: New Perspectives on Hollywood’s Frontier Narrative, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Cawelti, John G. (1975), The Six-Gun Mystique, Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University. Charlesworth, James H. (ed.) (2009), The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity, Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress. Deacy, Christopher (2006), “Reflections on the Uncritical Appropriation of Cinematic Christ-Figures: Holy Other or Wholly Inadequate?” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 13 (1). Available online: http://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/ jrpc.13.1.001 (accessed April 27, 2017). Derrida, Jacques (1994), Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf, New York and London: Routledge. Available online: http://cnqzu.com/library/Economics/marxian%20economics/ Derrida,%20Jacques-Specters%20of%20Marx.pdf (accessed April 21, 2017). Horsley, Richard A. (1995), Galilee: History, Politics, People, Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Koosed, Jennifer L., and Tod Linafelt (1996), “How the West Was Not One: Delilah Deconstructs the Western,” Semeia, 74: 167–81. Kozlovic, Anton Karl (2004), “The Structural Characteristics of the Cinematic Christfigure,” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 8 (1). Available online: http://www. utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/jrpc.8.1.005 (accessed April 27, 2017). Punke, Michael (2002), The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge, New York: Caroll & Graf. Reinhartz, Adele (2007), Jesus of Hollywood, New York: Oxford University Press. Reinhartz, Adele (2013), Bible and Cinema: An Introduction, London and New York: Routledge. Schaefer, Jack ([1949] 1966), Shane, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Schatz, Thomas (1981), Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System, New York: Random House. Seesengood, Robert Paul (2016), “Western Text(s): The Bible and the Movies of the Wild, Wild West,” in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (ed.), The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of the Bible and Its Reception in Film, Handbooks of the Bible and its Reception, 2, 1, 193–205, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Seesengood, Robert Paul, and Jennifer L. Koosed (2013), Jesse’s Lineage: The Legendary Lives of King David, Jesus of Nazareth, and Jesse James, Library of New Testament Studies, 479, Playing the Texts, 13, New York: Bloomsbury. Smith, Morton (1978), Jesus the Magician, San Francisco: Harper & Row. Thompson, Thomas L. (2005), The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David, New York: Basic. Tompkins, Jane (1992), West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns, New York: Oxford University Press. Twomey, Jay (ed.) (2007), Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds, 3 (2–3).



There’s a New Messiah in Town: The Messianic in the Western

259

Walsh, Richard (2003), Reading the Gospels in the Dark: Portrayals of Jesus in Film, Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Walsh, Richard (2012), “The Zealots in the Jesus Film Tradition,” in Reinhold Zwick (ed.), Religion und Gewalt im Bibelfilm, Film und Theologie 20, 99–126, Marburg: Schüren. Walsh, Richard (2013), “A Modest Proposal for Christ-Figure Interpretations: Explicated with Two Test Cases,” Relegere, 3 (1): 79–97. Available online: https://relegere.org/ relegere/article/view/569/636 (accessed April 21, 2017).

21

Lars von Trier’s Dogville as a Cinematic Parable Matthew S. Rindge

This chapter examines how Lars von Trier’s film Dogville (2003) functions as a cinematic parable.1 In doing so I am not pursuing one of the more common methods utilized in “Bible and Film” studies, namely analyzing how film(s) might use biblical texts. Instead of this type of “Bible in Film” approach, I attempt to show that this Danish film critiques aspects of American culture in ways that employ rhetorical strategies similar to those appearing in Jesus’s parables.2 This concern is not with a film’s appropriation or reconfiguration of specific biblical texts, but with how a film functions in analogous ways to a biblical text/genre (“Film as Bible”).3 I argue here that Dogville functions as a parable by 1) subverting conventional wisdom regarding anthropology, ethics, and theology; and 2) establishing character identification in order to elicit a self-critical appraisal among its viewers. I conclude by considering some possible insights that result from placing the film into dialogue with the parable of the Sheep and the Goats. The plot of Dogville follows the main character Grace Mulligan (Nicole Kidman) who, as a fugitive of sorts, enters a small, rural town (Dogville) in the Rocky Mountains. Town resident Tom Edison discovers her and invites her to stay there. Grace agrees, and Tom persuades the resistant townspeople to grant her sanctuary. In an effort to be helpful, Grace offers various forms of aid to each resident; although they first refuse her overtures, they eventually relent, and before long she finds that her days are filled with multiple chores. Two incidents lead the townspeople to become more suspicious and fearful of Grace: mob members show up and try to find her, and a law officer posts a wanted poster that accuses Grace of bank robbery. Viewing her as a liability, the townspeople insist that she double her hours of labor, and do so without wages. Grace’s life is upended when one of the town residents, Chuck, rapes her. Her subsequent attempt to escape is thwarted when Ben, whom she hires to drive her secretly out of town, not only rapes her, but also returns her to Dogville. This act catalyzes a crescendo of violence against Grace. The townspeople fasten a metal collar around her neck, which is chained to a heavy, steel wheel which she must drag around on the ground. With the exception of Tom, every man in the town takes turns raping Grace. The children mock her by ringing the town bell each time she is violated. The moral descent is savage and thorough. Tom does nothing to stop the horror and humiliation that becomes Grace’s new reality.



Lars von Trier’s Dogville as a Cinematic Parable

261

When the townspeople have had their fill of Grace, Tom informs the mobsters of her location. The gangsters’ arrival leads to the film’s denouement. Shocked to discover Grace’s state of imprisonment, they demand her immediate release, and they lead her to the car of the head gangster, who turns out to be Grace’s father. After a lengthy conversation with him, Grace eventually decides to annihilate the town. A massacre ensues in which Dogville is burned to the ground and every person (men, women, children, and even an infant) is executed by the gangster’s henchmen.

Subverting conventional wisdom The unsettling nature of Dogville—both the inhumane treatment of Grace throughout, and her abrupt advocacy of violent wrath at the end—is by no means an exception when it comes to von Trier’s larger body of work. As Roger Ebert notes of Dogville, “The idea reminds us of ‘Our Town,’ but von Trier’s version could be titled ‘Our Hell’” (2004). Like his other films, Dogville operates parabolically by unnerving audiences.4 As with most of von Trier’s films, however, Dogville does far more than merely arrest its viewers by its “vividness or strangeness.”5 His films tend to shock, and his oeuvre is a concatenation of visual and visceral disorientation. In this regard, “parable” is perhaps not provocative enough to describe his films. Von Trier’s own suggestion—that a film should be like stones in a person’s shoe—also fails to capture the profoundly disturbing nature of many, if not all, of his works (e.g., Breaking the Waves [1996], Dancer in the Dark [2000], Manderlay [2005], Antichrist [2009], Nymphomaniac: Vol. I; Vol. II [2013]). As von Trier remarks: “We want to see religion on the screen. We want to see ‘film lovers’ sparkling with life: improbable, stupid, stubborn, ecstatic, repulsive, monstrous and not things that have been tamed or castrated by a moralistic, bitter old film-maker, a dull puritan who praises the intellect-crushing virtues of niceness” (Björkman 2003: 61; emphasis original). More characteristic of Dogville’s parabolic quality is its persistent subversion of conventional myths.6 The film functions as a parable by undermining specific anthropological, ethical, and Christological perspectives.7 Chief among the views the film skewers is the notion that people are (or can be) good. This optimistic anthropology is articulated at the outset of the film when the narrator (John Hurt) announces in his opening monologue: “The residents of Dogville were good, honest folks.”8 The film itself is a thorough interrogation of this claim, ultimately finding it (and the townspeople) to be without any merit whatsoever. In the town of Dogville, human decency does not exist. On the contrary, those who are capable of doing so prey upon the weak, not in order to survive, but simply because they can. Their abuse of Grace is not Darwinian or even Machiavellian; their evil is of the banal variety. People live down to the name of their town; the people are indeed—as Grace’s father suggests—no more than dogs. The general poverty of Dogville’s residents also undercuts a myth about the nobility of those who dwell in the lower socioeconomic echelons. This entirely bleak view of humanity’s propensity (or capability) of goodness illustrates von Trier’s comment: “When all’s said and done, most films are about the

262

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

fact that man is ultimately an animal who cannot control himself or his environment, but is governed instead by his insatiable desires—and by his stupidity. That’s true of most characters, heroes and villains alike” (Björkman 2003: 251). Every resident of Dogville demonstrates both this claim and von Trier’s pessimism regarding humanism: “Humanism is based on a fairly naïve concept. I still think humanism is a good basis for possible co-operation here on Earth. But there’s a lot of fiction in humanism. The idea that people will take the trouble to co-operate and work for the good of their fellow man is deeply naïve” (Björkman 2003: 143). A prevailing ethical-theological assumption subverted in the film is the belief that grace is a beneficial virtue. Dogville illustrates instead that acting gracefully enables, invites, and perpetuates abusive behavior.9 Grace consistently incarnates her name by helping the townspeople in innumerable ways. She refuses to defend herself, either against sexual assault or false accusations. She turns her entire body—not only her cheek—when attacked. Yet rather than eliciting noble responses from the townspeople, Grace’s acts of grace engender an avalanche of abuse. Her mercy brings out the very worst in others. The critique of grace as an injurious activity is inseparable from the film’s bleak view of humanity’s brutality. In a world where people pulverize the weak, mercy merely encourages and facilitates brutish impulses. Grace’s compassion exacerbates her own exploitation. There is, accordingly, no possibility for redemption in such a world; there is no hope against hope. Reconciliation is futile, and violence is the only befitting response to the plague of humanity. Dogville insists that judgment trounces mercy (contra Jas 2:13). It is fitting that the only being to survive the violent judgment unleashed against Dogville is the dog Moses. Like Grace, this name is symbolic; the film insinuates (perhaps with a stereotypical and uninformed view of the “Old Testament”) that basic, decent behavior requires not mercy or grace, but laws and commands. Related to this critique of grace is a Christological subversion (or reimagination) of the figure of Jesus. Many hints point to Grace as a Jesus or Christ figure, and her father (James Caan) as a symbol for God. Grace’s father is called the “Big Man” in the shooting script, and referred to as the “Boss” in the film. His face is always hidden from the townspeople, and is only revealed during the final annihilation of the town—a destruction depicted as a divine judgment of wickedness. The opening and closing camera shots of the film are shot from a “God-like” point of view, and the narrator offers an omniscient point of view. Aside from using a female Jesus figure (von Trier uses women as Christ figures in Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark),10 the most startling aspect of Graceas-Jesus is her support and endorsement of the violent annihilation of the town. Her conversion to adopt her father’s worldview is surprising given the vehemence with which she initially rejects it: Father: You don’t pass judgment because you sympathize with them. The only thing you can blame is circumstances. Rapists and murderers may be the victims, according to you. But I call them dogs and if they’re lapping up their own vomit, the only way to stop them is with the lash. Grace: But dogs only obey their own nature, so why shouldn’t we forgive them?



Lars von Trier’s Dogville as a Cinematic Parable

263

Father: Dogs may be taught many useful things but not if we forgive them every time they obey their own nature. Grace: So I’m arrogant because I forgive people? Father: You have this preconceived notion that nobody can possibly attain the same high ethical standards as you, so you exonerate them. I can’t think of anything more arrogant than that. You, my child, my dear child, you forgive others with excuses that you would never permit for yourself. Grace: Why shouldn’t I be merciful? Why? Father: You should be merciful when there’s time to be merciful. But you must maintain your own standards. You owe them that. You owe them that. The penalty you deserve for your transgression, they deserve for their transgression. Grace: They’re human beings, dad! Father: Does every human being need to be accountable for their actions? Of course they do, and you don’t even give them that chance. And that is extremely arrogant. I love you. I love you. I love you to death. But you are the most arrogant person I’ve ever met, and you call me arrogant!?

Grace ultimately does, however, undergo a transformation from an advocate of mercy to a champion of apocalyptic judgment.11 The end of the conversation with her father sets the stage for her metamorphosis: Grace: The people who live here are doing their best under very hard circumstances. Father: If you say so, Grace, but is their best . . . really good enough? I do love you.

As Grace exits the car and walks around the town, the narrator gives voice to her thoughts: Grace looked around at the frightened faces behind the windowpanes that were following her every step, and felt ashamed of being part of inflicting that fear. How could she ever hate them, for what was at bottom merely their weakness? She would probably have done things like those that had befallen her if she had lived in one of these houses. To measure them by her own yardstick, as her father put it. Would she not have done the same as Chuck, Vera and Ben, and Mrs. Henson, and Tom—and all these people?

An abrupt alteration in music and lighting portends a shift within Grace: It was as if the light previously so merciful and faint finally refused to cover up for them any longer. The light now penetrated every unevenness and flaw in the buildings and in the people. And all of a sudden she knew the answer to her question all too well. If she had acted like them she couldn’t have defended a single one of her actions and could not have condemned them harshly enough. It was

264

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

as if her sorrow and pain finally assumed their rightful place. No! What they had done was not good enough and if one had the power to put it to rights it was one’s duty to do so, for the sake of other towns, for the sake of humanity, and not least for the sake of the human being that was Grace herself.

Grace returns to the car as a new convert to her father’s way of seeing the world. She announces: “If there’s any town this world would be better without, this is it.” The townspeople are summarily executed, and Grace shoots Tom herself. Far from laying down her own life, the Jesus figure in Dogville joins her father’s band of thugs.

Experience-taking, character identification, and transformation Another way in which Dogville functions parabolically is in its use of character identification, or experience-taking, for the purpose of eliciting self-reflection and transformation in its viewers. Two social psychologists have observed that readers’ behavior can change in tangible ways as a result of identifying with literary characters (Kaufman and Libby 2012). This phenomenon of “experience-taking” highlights a potential link between character identification (on the part of readers with literary characters) and personal transformation of those readers. The authors distinguish experience-taking from perspective-taking, claiming that the former involves a much more thorough process of immersion in the life and point of view of the character; experience-taking “entails the spontaneous replacement of self with [the character]” (Kaufman and Libby 2012: 2). They conclude that experience-taking “is a unique—and uniquely powerful—phenomenon that profoundly changes the way we think about ourselves and others by merging the lives we lead in reality and the lives we lead in the worlds of narratives” (Kaufman and Libby 2012: 17). Practical changes in this study included increased voting and enhanced empathy for people of a different race or sexual orientation. This study suggests that the greater degree to which readers immerse themselves in the story (and forget about themselves), the greater likelihood that concrete change will occur in their lives. Reading in a cubicle with a mirror, for example, decreased the chances that experience-taking would occur. Certain elements enhanced the likelihood of experience-taking, such as the use of first person narration (as opposed to third); and a main character who shared certain traits in common with readers (e.g., attending the same university). Experience-taking was also enhanced when significant differences between readers and the main character were revealed later in the narrative. If, for example, the main character was gay, then revealing this sexual orientation later in the story increased the odds that heterosexual students would identify with him/her. These students reported higher levels of favorable attitudes toward gay people after reading the story if the main character was revealed to be gay at the story’s conclusion. Similar results obtained when Caucasian students read about a black main character. Revealing the character’s



Lars von Trier’s Dogville as a Cinematic Parable

265

ethnicity at the end of the story increased positive attitudes on the part of whites for blacks. Luke’s parables make use of rhetorical strategies that rely upon a similar connection between character identification and personal transformation (Rindge 2014). Characters in Jesus’s parables must often make a pivotal decision, but parables often end abruptly before the character can make this important choice. This premature closure invites readers/hearers—who have already identified with this character and imagined themselves into the story—to wonder what choice they might make in the character’s place. At the end of the parable of the Father and Two Sons, the elder son is faced with a decision to celebrate with his younger brother or remain in the field (Lk. 15:11-32). The titular character in the parable of the Rich Fool must decide how he will spend the last few hours of his life (Lk. 12:16-20). In neither case do readers discover what choice the character makes since the story ends prematurely. The same is true with the fate of the rich man’s five brothers in the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Lk. 16:19-31): will they end up in Hades like their brother or avoid a future agony? By ending prematurely before characters make crucial choices, these parables invite audiences to imagine their own endings to these stories.12 Luke’s parables delay closure because that finality will be constructed and embodied by the creative choices of Luke’s readers/hearers.13 They put the finishing touches on these stories by writing the script with their own lives. They become the living authors of their own unfolding drama. One can add to these incomplete parables the same tagline that concludes Wim Wenders’s film Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire 1987)—“to be continued. . . .” Character identification (or vilification) is a chief rhetorical strategy in the parable Nathan tells King David. Nathan’s parable prompts David to empathize with a poor man, and condemn a rich man who takes the poor man’s lamb (2 Sam. 12:1b–7). After David condemns the cruelty of the rich man, Nathan famously declares, “You are the man!” (12:7a). Nathan’s parabolic strategy succeeds in convincing David to condemn himself. Instrumental in this process is David’s empathy with the poor man, and his corresponding outrage at the rich man. Jesus’s parables similarly seek to challenge readers to recognize themselves in the characters: “You are the eldest son!” . . . “You are the five brothers of the rich man!” . . . “You are the rich fool!” Dogville utilizes a similar rhetorical strategy. After the annihilation of the town, the final credits play over a lengthy montage of photographs, many from the collection American Pictures by Danish photographer Jacob Holdt (1985) (see Figure 21.1). His photos depict poor and hungry Americans struggling to survive. Many are homeless. A fair percentage of these are Black Americans, and many are children. Some photos show poor people who have died. A few display wealthier Americans passing by these poor, homeless people living (or dead) on the street. That these images are intended as a critique of America is made evident by setting this entire photographic sequence to David Bowie’s song “Young Americans” (1975). Dogville is the first of what was originally intended to be a trilogy of films called USA—Land of Opportunities. In the second film in the series, Manderlay (2005), Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) visits a plantation in the American South where slavery was still practiced in the 1930s.14 Von Trier states that he cast a Brit as the narrator because he did not “want to hide the fact that the USA is being observed from the outside”

266

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Figure 21.1  Closing credits of Dogville (2003). (Björkman 2003: 254). Many film critics responded negatively to their perception that the film offered a critique of America. Ebert is explicit: “His dislike of the United States . . . is so palpable that it flies beyond criticism into the realm of derangement. . . . He approaches the ideological subtlety of a raving prophet on a street corner” (2004). The images and music during Dogville’s credits are rhetorically impressive, especially since they follow so quickly after the emotional catharsis that many viewers experience when the townspeople are finally punished for their gross abuse of Grace. If viewers experience an emotional purgation in Dogville’s destruction, the credits have the potential to convince audiences to apply the condemnation aimed at the townspeople to themselves. The credits are the rhetorical equivalent of the parable Nathan tells King David. “You are the residents of Dogville!” insist the series of photographs of poor, hungry, and vulnerable Americans. The film compels viewers to ponder how similar their neglect of vulnerable people in their midst is to the harm visited upon Grace. Enhancing the discomfort of viewing Grace’s abuse is the film’s peculiar visual style. Von Trier instigated and championed “Dogme 95,” which encourages natural filmmaking techniques, and eschews the use of artificial elements and special effects. The entire film Dogville occurs on a flat stage, and many props are not physically present (actors pretend to open and close doors) (see Figure 21.2). In many ways, the film is visually more akin to a play in the theater. This minimalistic, Brechtian aesthetic has an important affective influence on viewers.15 The absence of walls amplifies the disturbing nature of the rape scenes because the other actors (although not the characters they play) can see Grace being violated. The lack of walls underscores the complicity of these characters in Grace’s abuse. Just as Dogville’s residents pass by as Grace is raped, so too are viewers of the film invited to reflect on their own proximity to—and perhaps complicity in—sexual violence and more general oppression of the poor and vulnerable. One of Tom’s final remarks unknowingly but aptly describes the film as a whole: “This specific illustration has surpassed all expectations. It says so much about being human. It’s been painful, but I think you have to agree, it’s been edifying, wouldn’t you say?” If there is any edification, it lies in the hope (against hope?) that audiences might see themselves reflected in the very ugly mirror of Dogville, and alter their behavior as a result.



Lars von Trier’s Dogville as a Cinematic Parable

267

Figure 21.2  The minimalism of Dogville (2003).

Conclusion: Dogville and the Sheep and the Goats Dogville and the parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Mt. 25:31-46) share enough similarities in common to consider each text in light of the other. Both stories feature an apocalyptic judgment of human beings by a (semi-)divine agent. In each case, aiding the poor or vulnerable person in their midst is the primary (or sole) criterion used to determine the judgment. Like Jesus, Grace at different points is the “least of these”; she is hungry, thirsty, naked, a stranger, sick, and in prison. In each case, it is these “least” who become the judge in the final judgment—Jesus in the parable (as the hungry, thirsty, naked, etc.), and Grace in the film. Although Dogville reviles those who actively harm Grace, it joins with the parable in reserving its harshest condemnation for those (like Tom) who fail to act. Passivity is the ultimate sin. Finally, in both texts, the judge unleashes—or is complicit in—violence against the guilty. This last similarity offers potential insight into the biblical text. As an unusual Jesus figure, Grace’s conversion from mercy to violence parallels the curious (and often overlooked) transition of the nonviolent Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5–7; compare Lk. 6:17-49) into the violent—and apocalyptic—Jesus (Mk 12:1-9; Mt. 18:23-35; 25:31-46; Rev. 19:11-21). How to explain such a radical transformation on the part of Jesus? People tend not to associate the Jesus of the gospels (or the historical Jesus) with the future judge who comes with a sword in his mouth to vanquish his enemies. Yet, it is precisely this paradoxical Jesus figure that Dogville presents—one who transitions from an agent of peace and love into an instrument of deadly violence. The film proposes that a possible reason for the biblical portrayal of Jesus as a violent judge may be due to the early Jewish-Christian community’s experience of persecution. In one significant way, Grace’s violence against the residents of Dogville is quite unlike the punishment of the goats in Matthew 25. Catalyzing Grace’s conversion into a violent judge is a desire to protect the vulnerable. She tells her father shortly before the massacre, “It could happen again, somebody happening by, revealing their frailty. That’s what I want to use the power for, if you don’t mind. I want to make the world

268

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

a little better.” Foregoing mercy and inflicting judgment is thus rooted not merely in some type of revenge for past wrongs (as it appears in the Sheep and Goats parable), but in a desire to shield the defenseless. Whereas the divine violence in Matthew 25 (and other biblical apocalypses) is often used to punish the wicked, in Dogville it is employed to protect the vulnerable bodies of future victims. Grace’s violence is not primarily punitive, but protective. In this regard, the film seems to offer a more compelling ethic (violence as a force for good) than that of the Sheep and the Goats.

Notes 1 Scott Foundas calls the film “a potent parable of human suffering” (2004). Roger Ebert notes, “In [von Trier’s] town, which I fear works as a parable of America . . .” (2004). Quoting D. H. Lawrence’s description of The Scarlet Letter, J. Hoberman calls the film a “sort of parable . . . with a hellish meaning” (2004). 2 I do not intend to suggest that the genre of parable is limited to biblical texts. Numerous examples of parables occur in rabbinic texts (see Johnston and McArthur 2014). John Dominic Crossan describes the stories of Jorge Luis Borges and Franz Kafka as parables (1975: 60), and I consider the graffiti art of Banksy to be parabolic. 3 Another potentially fruitful area for Bible and film scholars are the various ways in which films might function as sacred texts, either for individuals or communities. 4 Many have identified the inclusion of surprising or unusual elements as a key feature of Jesus’s parables. Examples include the presence of a Samaritan (Lk. 10:30-36), pigs (Lk. 15:15-16), prostitutes (Lk. 15:30), leaven (Mt. 13:33), unclean fish (Mt. 13:47), torture (Mt. 18:34; Lk. 16:23-25), and theft (Lk. 16:1-8). C. H. Dodd’s classic definition of a parable (“a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought”) highlights this vivid or strange element ([1935] 1961: 5; emphasis added). 5 To borrow from Dodd’s definition in the previous note. 6 On the relationship between parable and myth, see Crossan (1975: 9) and Walsh (2001: 124–28). 7 As Bernard Brendan Scott aptly notes, “The threat of the parable is that it subverts the myths that sustain our world” (1989: 424). On the subversive tendencies of Jesus’s parables, see Crossan (1973, 1975), Scott (1989), and Rindge (2014, 2016a). It is not always easy to determine 1) whether the perspectives critiqued in Jesus’s parables are Jewish or Greco-Roman; and 2) whether the content of the parables emerges from the historical Jesus, Jesus’s followers, or a combination of the two. 8 All quotes are from the DVD version of the film (2004). 9 J. Hoberman notes: “For passion, originality, and sustained chutzpah, this austere allegory of failed Christian charity and Old Testament payback is von Trier’s strongest movie—a masterpiece, in fact” (2004). 10 Kevin Smith uses a female figure for God (Alannis Morisette) in his film Dogma (1999). 11 For a consideration of how Dogville functions as apocalyptic cinema, see Rindge (2016b). 12 The use by characters in these parables of first person dialogue and monologues increases the possibility that readers might identify with them (compare Lk. 12:17-19; 15:17-19). Questions such as “What might/should/shall I do?” invite readers/hearers



Lars von Trier’s Dogville as a Cinematic Parable

269

to wonder what action a character might take, what they might do in the character’s place, and—finally—what they might do in their own lives (Lk. 12:17; 16:3; 20:17). 13 Luke uses a similar device outside of a parable. Whereas Mark and Matthew describe the rich man—whom Jesus tells to sell all his goods and give to the poor—as leaving, Luke has the man stay and listen to Jesus’s subsequent teaching on wealth (Lk. 18:1825). As with the parables, readers are not told what this man decides to do with his wealth after hearing Jesus’s comments. 14 Manderlay also concludes with Bowie’s song “Young Americans.” It is unclear if von Trier will follow through with his plans for a third film in the trilogy (tentatively titled Washington). 15 On the affective nature of von Trier’s films, see Seesengood 2016.

Works cited Björkman, Stig (2003), Trier on von Trier, London: Faber and Faber. Crossan, John Dominic (1973), In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus, New York: Harper & Row. Crossan, John Dominic (1975), The Dark Interval: Towards a Theology of Story, Niles, IL: Argus. Dodd, C. H. ([1935] 1961), The Parables of the Kingdom, rev. ed., New York: Scribners. Ebert, Roger (2004), “Dogville,” April 9. Available online: http://www.rogerebert.com/ reviews/dogville-2004 (accessed February 8, 2017). Foundas, Scott (2004), “Once Upon a Time in Amerika,” LA Weekly, March 25. Available online: http://www.laweekly.com/content/printView/2137956 (accessed February 8, 2017). Hoberman, J. (2004), “The Grace of Wrath,” Village Voice, March 16. Available online: http://www.villagevoice.com/film/the-grace-of-wrath-6407914 (accessed February 8, 2017). Holdt, Jacob (1985), American Pictures: A Personal Journey Through the American Underclass, New York: American Pictures Foundation. Johnston, Robert M., and Harvey K. McArthur (2014), They Also Taught in Parables: Rabbinic Parables from the First Centuries of the Christian Era, Eugene: Wipf & Stock. Kaufman, George F., and Lisa K. Libby (2012), “Changing Beliefs and Behavior Through Experience-Taking,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103: 1–19. Rindge, Matthew S. (2014), “Luke’s Artistic Parables: Narratives of Subversion, Imagination, and Transformation,” Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, 68 (4): 403–15. Rindge, Matthew S. (2016a), Profane Parables: Film and the American Dream, Waco: Baylor University Press. Rindge, Matthew S. (2016b), “Revelatory Film: Apocalyptic Themes in Film and Cinematic Apocalypses,” in J. P. J. Schedtler and K. J. Murphy (eds.), Apocalypses in Context: Apocalyptic Currents throughout History, 337–58, Minneapolis: Fortress. Scott, Bernard Brendan (1989), Hear Then the Parable: A Commentary on the Parables of Jesus, Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress. Seesengood, Robert, (2016), “A World of Feeling: The Affect of Lars von Trier and/ as Biblical Apocalyptic,” in Laura Copier and Caroline Vander Stichele (eds.), Close Encounters between Bible and Film, 209–32, Atlanta: SBL. Walsh, Richard (2001), Mapping Myths of Biblical Interpretation, Playing the Texts 4, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic.

270

Part Three

Texts

272

22

Can We Try that Again?: The Fate of the Biblical Canon on Film Matthew Page

In one sense Bible movies are substantially independent of one another; they are the works of differing filmmakers, working across a range of genres, eras, and filmmaking styles, and adapting the stories of differing characters, born hundreds of years apart, from a variety of books that are themselves written in vastly divergent genres by a broad range of authors. Yet the connection between them all is also immediately obvious: they are all, from one extent to another, connected by the silver thread that is the biblical canon.1 Filmmakers, however, adapt some parts of the canon far more frequently than others. Figure 22.1 illustrates trends in filmmakers’ selections by plotting over ninehundred biblical film adaptations, with respect to time and story.2 Film portrayals of Jesus occur at a rate of more than one a year, while the book of Zephaniah still awaits its first significant adaptation. Closer inspection reveals more surprising insights. Samson appears often, but Deborah rarely, despite the fact their stories lie just a few pages apart and that their textual significance and prominence is roughly equivalent. This raises two key questions: First, which parts of the Bible have filmmakers frequently sought to adapt and which have barely been given any attention whatsoever? Secondly, why have the former proved popular with filmmakers? Few films have sought to adapt an entire biblical book.3 The aesthetic completeness that is particular to a biblical book is generally at odds with the demands of a film script. For this reason Bible films tend to gravitate more naturally around a specific character, or characters, rather than specific books. So, when we think about canonicity in relation to biblical narratives that are treated by filmmakers, it is perhaps more helpful to think about narrative units within the Bible rather than individual books.4 Furthermore, just as we see certain trends in which narratives from the Hebrew Bible appear, a similarly uneven pattern can be observed when it comes to the parts of the gospels covered or not (although here the narrative units are far smaller, consisting of individual incidents rather than entire biographies). Indeed, most Jesus films have harmonized the four (canonical) gospels, and then selected those episodes which best portray the filmmaker’s vision of Jesus. Some of these, such as the crucifixion, appear very commonly; others far more rarely. Chattaway (2016a) has recently highlighted

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Figure 22.1  Biblical films plotted for story against time.

274

numerous narratives which “most Jesus films miss,” suggesting that some parts of the gospels are not really considered part of any theoretical “filmic canon.” Various books and articles written on the development of Bible films have attempted to subdivide the material by decade (particularly Kinnard and Davis 1992). While this approach has its advantages, I have opted for a sevenfold division here, which links the



Can We Try that Again?: The Fate of the Biblical Canon on Film

275

films both to social forces outside of the film industry as well as to key developments directly related to particular Bible films and their reception. While the seven eras are roughly the same in length, I spend considerably longer discussing the early silent era as this is the age that is furthest from our own and, in many ways, the most alien. Furthermore, doing so will call attention to some of the threads that develop as the story progresses further.

The early silent era: From the birth of cinema through to the first feature length Bible films (From the Manger to the Cross [1912] and Judith of Bethulia [1914]) Perhaps surprisingly the early silent era saw a far greater rate of Bible film production than any period until the few years around the new millennium. In the period up to the release of D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916), over 110 films based on the Hebrew Bible were produced. A quick glance confirms that all the usual suspects are present but other far less common names soon emerge. Gaumont’s fourth entry in their Les sept péchés capitaux series, La luxure (The Seven Deadly Sins: Lust 1910), told the story of Susanna and the Elders (from the deuterocanonical story of Susanna, Susanna/ Daniel 13). This tale of attempted sexual coercion and false accusation is fairly dark for the period although it is not hard to imagine its message of the importance of female virtue might be something the filmmakers wished to stress.  The following year Gaumont released  Fils de la Sunamite  (The Son of the Shunammite 1911) representing an episode from the life of Elisha, which remains that story’s only liveaction adaptation. Just as active in this period were Pathé Frères who released Athalie (1910) about Queen Athaliah, the daughter/sister of King Ahab who seized the throne of Judah after Jehu’s revolt (2 Kings 11). The fascinating story contains more than enough drama to fill the film’s twenty or so minutes, but it has only been attempted two other times in the entire history of biblical films, in TV productions from France (1962) and Italy (1964). The following year Pathé Frères produced a slightly more familiar Hebrew Bible film,  Jaël et Sisera  (1911), one of the many biblical films directed by Henri Andréani. This is the only time the events of Judges 4 have found their way onto the screen and it is curious that the film omits the story’s usual leading lady—Deborah. Shepherd suggests this may be because “Israelite femme fatales such as Judith and Jael had already enjoyed a long history of glorification and vilification prior to their emergence on the silver screen” (2013: 142). These films might be considered outliers, but the popularity of another story suffered a far more surprising decline. The tragic story of Jephthah’s daughter was covered no less than four times in this earliest period but has only had one subsequent adaptation, Einat Kapach’s  Bat Yiftach (Jephthah’s Daughter 1996).5 Arguably the most famous Hebrew Bible film in this era is D. W. Griffith’s Judith of Bethulia  (1914), not least because its director was subsequently catapulted into controversy and stardom. However, there had already been three other films produced depicting the story. Yet whereas interest in films about Jephthah petered out, Judith

276

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

films continued to appear sporadically, particularly in Catholic countries, notably seven different television films from 1959–69. Even more surprising is the changing fortunes of Daniel. The first films about Daniel were among the very first biblical films, the earliest being two from Pathé in 1905: Le festin de Balthazar  (Balthazar’s Feast) and  Daniel dans la fosse aux lions (Daniel in the Lion’s Den). No less than seven other Daniel films followed in this earliest period (five from Gaumont). It is all the more surprising then that following the last of these in 1913, it was not until 1953’s  Slaves of Babylon  that the story was covered again, followed by another gap of twenty-five years before the story was adapted once more in the Greatest Heroes of the Bible television series (1978–79). Surprisingly, the story has seen something of a revival in recent years, mainly due to church-targeted productions or adaptations of Verdi’s opera Nabucco.6 The situation with early New Testament adaptations is rather more complicated. Many of these films were not released as complete units, but as a series of tableaux. This enabled exhibitors to pick and choose the parts of the canonical narratives they wished to display. Over time these collections of tableaux were expanded with the footage being re-released with new tableaux added in, or some of the older footage re-shot, often retaining the same mise-en-scène. The most prominent example is the various films released by Pathé under the title La Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ (The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ) from 1898 to 1913. With each release the number of available tableaux grew, from sixteen in the original edition to thirty-two in the second (1902) version, to thirty-seven in the 1907 release, and again to forty-three by the time of the 1913 version (Boillat and Robert 2016: 27). Unsurprisingly Jesus’s death and birth are cornerstones of this filmic canon. Of the thirty or so films made about Jesus in the early silent era around eighteen feature the events of Jesus’s passion.7 The “canonical” status of the passion had already been established in the nineteenth century; of the eight Jesus films made before 1900 only Georges Méliès’s Le Christ marchant sur les flots (Christ Walking on the Water 1899) was not primarily about Jesus’s death. This soon changed, however. Across the early silent era as a whole, episodes from Jesus’s ministry appear more frequently than the events of Jesus’s passion. (The majority adapt a single incident.)8 However many of the incidents depicted in this earliest period would not often appear in future films about Jesus’s life: The healing of the Widow of Nain’s son featured in the earliest remaining Jesus film La vie et la passion de Jésus Christ (The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ 1898), and the 1903 Lubin series  The Passion Play  featured episodes such as Christ and the Disciples Plucking Corn and Christ Calling Zaccheus from the Tree. That many of these films did not feel the need to include Jesus’s resurrection contrasts with the later situation in which films omitting the resurrection, even if, like Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), they were a variation on the same passion play tradition, faced criticism. A far broader range of stories, then, were brought to the screen in the first twenty or so years than in the two eras that followed it. Much of this is because this earliest period of film history was chaotic, certainly compared to the studio system that was to follow. Production companies were only just being set up; technology was still emerging, though improving at a rapid rate; the star system was still in its infancy; and expectations around production values were still fairly low. Exhibitors tended to screen numerous



Can We Try that Again?: The Fate of the Biblical Canon on Film

277

shorter films in one showing, resulting in a demand for a larger number of films which, combined with the fact that theater-style painted sets were still acceptable and there was no need to pay stars large wages, meant that making films was still relatively cheap. Consequently, there was a large and diverse range of filmmakers each with their own agendas and interests. There were the technological pioneers such as the Lumierè brothers, dramatists from theater backgrounds, magicians such as Georges Méliès, and, of particular relevance here, clergy and evangelists seeking to harness the potential of the new medium for religious instruction and evangelism. Each had a different motivation that affected their choice of material. For some it was the spectacular (Méliès’s camera tricks evolved into DeMille’s effects-laden epics), but for others it was a chance to educate and use the new medium to convey their message. Interestingly, the period that most mirrors that hive of filmmaking activity is the start of the twenty-first century. In contrast to the intervening period, when filmmaking was the expensive preserve of the rich or the extremely dedicated, both eras are typified by more democratized marketplaces, relatively cheap film production, and more fluid distribution channels. Religiously motivated filmmakers, both then and now, have taken advantage of this, creating a relatively high number of religious films with considerable narrative diversity. Those stories not considered worthy of adaptation in more professional circles, but close to the hearts of religious groups, have featured primarily in these two eras.

The late silent era: From Intolerance to the end of the silent era9 As the European film industry declined during the First World War and the locus of filmmaking activity shifted toward America, the ways that Bible films were being made also changed. For example, the overall number of films based on the Hebrew Bible being produced dropped from around six and a half per year prior to the release of Intolerance to four and a half per year thereafter. Diversity also decreased as many characters that had appeared in the early silent era did not reappear in the latter period. The stories of Athaliah, Jael, Ruth, Elisha, Micah, Joshua, and Daniel were just some of those that were not remade and overall the variety of stories dropped by about a quarter. It tended to be in Europe where stories were adapted for the first time. While the most famous version of the Judith story, Judith of Bethulia (1914), was produced in Protestant America, the other Judith stories in this era were from Catholic France and Italy. The German films  Hiob  (Job 1918) and Jeremias  (1922) became the first films based on those biblical books, while neighboring Austria broke new ground with Mikhály Kertész’ Sodom und Gomorrha (1922).10 The film was one of many in the late silent era that invested a huge budget to provide the necessary spectacle that would come to be synonymous with the genre. These big-budget, spectacle-laden Bible films had an impact that went far beyond themselves. All of these stories would get a big-screen Hollywood remake of sorts in the period between 1949 and 1969—in four cases using the same title (see Table 22.1).11

278

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Table 22.1  The influence of silent Bible film epics on future eras 1920s film title

Story

Golden Era title

Contemporary title

Sodom und Gomorrha  (1922) Samson und Delilah (1922) The Shepherd King (1923) The Ten Commandments (1923) The King of Kings (1927) Noah’s Ark (1928)

Lot

Year One (2009)

Jesus

Sodom and Gomorrah (1962) Samson and Delilah (1949) David and Bathsheba (1951) The Ten Commandments (1956) King of Kings (1961)

Noah

The Bible (1966)

Samson David Moses

King David (1985)12 Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) The Passion of the Christ (2004) Noah (2014)

These six stories also featured in various TV series adaptations and five of the six stories have also received relatively recent big-screen Hollywood adaptations, albeit in often unconventional styles. By contrast, those “important” biblical stories that did not get a major adaptation during this era (e.g., Abraham, Joseph, Joshua, Gideon, Daniel, and Paul) have tended to lack subsequent big-screen Hollywood adaptations. Two main reasons explain this situation. Lang (2007: 28–29) has suggested a financial reason: “If a certain story was made into a successful film, inevitably it will be remade. . . . If a film failed . . . producers would shy away from the subject.”13 Certainly, at the more investment-heavy end of the spectrum, producers may have felt reassured by the knowledge that these stories had proved popular in the past and maintained a certain cultural cache, though this is less relevant for smaller filmmakers. Furthermore, one could also argue that some stories are more suited to the elements of the spectacle and/or miracle of the big-screen blockbuster.

The early sound era—From the first “talkies” to early 1949 The start of the sound era was a time of great development and innovation, but the production of Bible films decreased severely. The early silent era had seen around six and a half Hebrew Bible films being made a year; between 1930 and 1949 this dropped to just one per year. Only six films based on the gospels were made and none of these was a major release by a major studio. New adaptations of previous favorites did appear—Joseph and His Brethren  (1930),  Potiphar’s Wife  (1930), Joseph in the Land of Egypt (1932), Samson (1936), and Queen Esther (1948)—but the other films differ markedly from what we tend to think of as Bible films today. Notably, “none of the depression era religious spectaculars . . . deals with the Resurrection” (Forshey 1992: 185). From a visual angle Lot in Sodom (1933) was an experimental/avant garde film, which “hints at the [story’s] moral complexities” (Elley 1984: 30), while  Father Noah’s Ark  (1933) was animated. Nevertheless, it is the ideas behind some of these films that are most interesting. The



Can We Try that Again?: The Fate of the Biblical Canon on Film

279

Italian film  I dieci comandamenti (The Ten Commandments 1945), for example, featured ten stories illustrating each of the commandments (Celli and Cottino-Jones 2001: 50), and two other films notionally took place in a children’s religious education class. The Eternal Jew (1933) featured a rabbi telling the story of Abraham to some children (Gevinson 1997: 318). Similarly, The Green Pastures (1936) avoided the events’ direct depiction and instead portrayed them as imagined by children. The latter film is perhaps the most well-known Hebrew Bible film of the era so it is interesting that it takes an alternative approach to canonicity, emphasizing oral transmission rather than text. The episode featuring an unspecified prophet who is a composite of various biblical characters also raises the possibility that the child/children in question are not as familiar with the later parts of their Old Testament canon as they were with the earlier parts. The era’s most successful religious epic was DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross (1932) though it lies outside the biblical canon “in terms of narrative, character, chronology and geography” and favors “invented non-biblical protagonists” (Babington and Evans 1993: 177). While Paul has often “languished in relative obscurity” (Walsh 2005: 1), this period saw two notable portrayals both called Life of St. Paul, from Norman Walker in 1938, and John T. Coyle’s series in 1949, beginning a trend that would dominate the following decade.

The Golden Era: From Samson and Delilah to The Bible While it was undoubtedly DeMille’s 1949 film Samson and Delilah  that lit the blue touch paper, the 1950s and 1960s were dominated by the biblical epic.14 Initially, however, films around, rather than about, the life of Jesus dominated. If the “trend was born in the mind of DeMille . . . and matured in 1956 and 1959, with The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur,” it owed a great deal to the movies made around the fringes to the “greatest story ever told” (Solomon [1978] 2001: 15). Both Quo Vadis? (1951) and The Robe (1953) featured both Peter and Paul, while Peter alone also appeared in six other films in the next ten years: Barabbas (1953), Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), The Power of the Resurrection (1958), The Big Fisherman (1959), and Barabbas (1961). Various other minor New Testament characters also featured including Pontius Pilate in Ben-Hur (1959), the Prodigal Son in The Prodigal (1955), Simon Magus in The Silver Chalice (1954), as well as Herod, Pilate, John the Baptist, Herodias, and her daughter in Salome (1953). The rest of the Bible was also to prove very popular. In just seventeen years between  Samson and Delilah  and The Bible .  .  . In the Beginning (1966),  ninety-two films were produced based on the Hebrew Bible and around thirty films covered, to one degree or another the life of Jesus, the start of the early church, or both. Many of these were big-budget releases by major Hollywood studios and included the six stories discussed and listed above in Table 22.1. Yet what distinguishes this period is the size and success of Hollywood’s biblical epics rather than their championing of the canonical backwaters, though Henry Koster’s The Story of Ruth (1960) was a rare exception. More significant in this regard was the “Peplum” revival during the renaissance of the Italian film industry in the 1950s and 1960s. I grandi condottieri (Gideon and

280

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Samson 1965) was the first film to feature Gideon and there were also outings for the stories of Athaliah (Atalia 1964) and the Maccabees (Il vecchio testamento 1962) as the “Italian sword and sandal epic was born again” (Solomon [1978] 2001: 15). There was also a flurry of TV films in various other Catholic countries, featuring depictions of characters who are of greater significance to Catholics than to Protestants, such as Susanna, Judith, and Veronica. The emergence of smaller independent/church-based filmmakers also boosted this wider range of stories. In addition to a high proportion of gospel stories, the Living Bible series (1951–58) expanded to cover most of the book of Acts and many Hebrew Bible stories. Indeed, its coverage of the Hebrew Bible was perhaps the first time filmmakers had selected a group of stories based on their importance in Christian theology, rather than on their artistic or financial merit. Perhaps surprisingly films from church-based producers, such as I Beheld his Glory (1953) and Day of Triumph (1954), broke the taboo that had developed in America about depicting Jesus onscreen. In contrast, the big studios tended to play it safe, leaving it to the smaller more independent filmmakers to be more experimental. But having witnessed the success of these films, big-budget films based on the Hebrew Bible, and films set around the fringes of the gospels, Hollywood plumped for two major Jesus films in four years: King of Kings (1961) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). Both films failed at the box office, however, and with the failure of The Bible . . . In the Beginning in 1966, the “Biblical epic ground to a halt at more or less the same time as the Roman epic” (Richards 2008: 132).

Experimental era: 1967–89 While television had emerged during—and had perhaps even been a catalyst for— the Golden Age of Bible films, it was during the following two decades that it really came of age as a medium for biblical films. If Hollywood’s Golden Era had also been reflected in a growing interest in countries further afield, that tendency only increased during the late 1960s, the 1970s, and 1980s. This was particularly true in Europe where Greece, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands all released their maiden—primarily television network—Bible films. Television gave filmmakers the potential to explore their given subject at far greater length. Sometimes this allowed more time to explore some of the less well-known incidents from a character’s life, as in Atti degli apostoli (Acts of the Apostles 1969) or Moses the Lawgiver (1974), but at others it enabled a greater number of stories to be covered as separate episodes within a series.  The Greatest Heroes of the Bible series (1978–79), for example, spanned fourteen different stories including lesser covered episodes such as Joshua, the Tower of Babel, Daniel, and Esther.15 The similarly named The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible (1986–92) contained thirteen stories from the Bible produced as “cartoons” that came to prominence in video release. This began a new trend, which has expanded greatly in recent decades, mainly due to those making films for religious purposes covering material that has not had a great deal of cinematic exposure, such as Muharrem Gürses’s 1979 film Nemrud, a rare take on the story of



Can We Try that Again?: The Fate of the Biblical Canon on Film

281

Nimrod. Nevertheless, this period saw only one story adapted for the first time, the story of Tamar in the 1970 La salamandra del deserto (released in English-speaking countries as Tamar, Wife of Er). When Bible films did appear in cinemas, it was away from the pressures of big budgets and the need to generate big profits. Forced to work with lower budgets, filmmakers devised more creative ways to explore the biblical texts. No longer required to aim for the middle-of-the-road lowest common denominator, they could more boldly pursue their own artistic vision, pose their own questions, and explore issues that more mainstream movies simply could not risk. One pertinent feature of this era’s Jesus films was their tendency to eschew the resurrection. The four main Jesus films to appear on cinema screens in this era—Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), Godspell (1973), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and Jésus de Montreal (1989)—all omitted his birth and a literal interpretation of the resurrection.16

The canon around the millennium (1990–2004) The impending arrival of the new millennium was accompanied by an unprecedented volume of productions in a surprisingly short amount of time. The Golden Era of biblical epics had produced over ninety Hebrew Bible films in just a seventeen-year period; the experimental era saw a similar number in twenty-two years. But between the start of 1990 and the start of 2004 there were around 120 different productions based on the Hebrew Bible alone, which gained a significant release, not to mention around thirty films based on parts of the New Testament. It was perceived, perhaps incorrectly, that the audience for biblical films was shrinking, yet the genre was thriving in other areas. Production arrangements were changing radically, not least with television companies from different countries collaborating; pooling their budgets they produced films that could be broadcast on their different networks that could then also be sold on DVD. One such collaboration, the seventeen-installment Bible Collection series, included films about rare subjects such as Jeremiah (1998), Paul (2000), and The Apocalypse (2000), which “reveals how John’s visions arose from his experiences of persecution” (Walsh 2016: 507). Another series, Testament: The Bible in Animation (1996), put a greater emphasis on the prophets with episodes about Jonah, Elijah, and Daniel, as well as Ruth. The other new area of development was the broadcast on Christian television networks as well as DVD release of Bible films (long and short). These included, in particular, animated series aimed more at children, including fourteen episodes of The Greatest Heroes and Legends of the Bible (1998), the thirty-six entries of Animated Stories from the Bible  (1992–95), and  the surprisingly popular Veggie Tales (1993– 2015), whose more fluid adaptations make them harder to categorize. However, there were also filmmakers from outside of traditional Christianity. Israeli director Einat Kapach’s film  Bat Yiftach  (Jephtah’s Daughter 1996) revisited the story of Jephthah’s daughter, and The Liken Bible Series contained both episodes based on biblical stories and others based on the Book of Mormon such as Nephi & Laban (2003).

282

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

The contemporary period: From The Passion of the Christ to today The success of The Passion of the Christ (2004) made producers realize that biblical films could again be financially viable. This boosted the rate of such films targeted at adults, broadening the range of stories while also seeing mainstream releases of five of the six core stories (see Table 22.1). However, it also had a number of other effects. First  it led to the re-emergence of the passion play film. While this was a popular feature of the earliest silent movies, in some sectors of the church it had almost become a lost tradition. But in the wake of Gibson’s film, numerous filmed passion “plays” emerged such as  Color of the Cross  (2006),  The Manchester Passion  (2006),  The Passion  (2008), Su Re  (2012), and  Killing Jesus (2015). These adaptations curtail the gospel filmic canon in favor of one (highly significant) part of the life of Christ. Furthermore, the perceived wisdom that Christian audiences only wanted Bible films suitable for all the family was turned on its head by Gibson’s violent yet popular biopic. Far from minimizing the violence in the Bible as previous generations of films had done, Bible films became more violent, tipping the balance in favor of stories where violence was key. The History Channel’s series The Bible (2013) adapted battle stories such as Joshua and at times introduced even more violence to its stories. The media industry’s growth in other countries has led to new regions making films about biblical stories. For example, Catholic Brazil has produced a number of extended series about biblical characters, such as Rei Davi (King David 2012). Elsewhere Islamic countries such as Turkey and Iran have made a number of films, though with more emphasis on the Quranic presentation of these stories: Marian-e Moghaddas (Saint Mary  1997); the 35-hour long TV series  Yousof e Payambar (Joseph the Prophet 2008); Ayyub e Payambar (Job the Prophet 1993); and  Ebrahim Payambar (Ibraheem,  the  Friend  of  God  2008). Sometimes these productions have used the Quran to augment the biblical accounts; at other times to replace them. This is part of a broader trend, which has seen a blurring around the edges of the canon, as apocryphal, pseudepigraphal, and other noncanonical writings become key sources. While 2016’s  Young Messiah  adapted a modern novel, it contained several episodes drawn from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Infancy Gospel of James.17 Similarly, Mary (2005) featured scenes taken from Gospel of Mary, while Aronofsky’s Noah (2014) “drew on extra-biblical accounts of the flood” and “the Jewish midrashic tradition” (Runions 2016: 827). Perhaps the most radical example was Nader Talebzadeh’s Mesih/Jesus the Spirit of God (2007), which used the Gospel of Barnabas and the Quran to portray a story where Jesus is not killed but taken up to heaven just before his crucifixion and replaced on the cross by (a physically transformed) Judas. This represents a different understanding of canonicity, one that very much impinges on the way the canon has been adapted onscreen and yet one with which mainstream Christianity does not currently identify.



Can We Try that Again?: The Fate of the Biblical Canon on Film

283

Conclusions Before closing, I would like to offer a few further, supplemental observations on the overall picture that has been presented. First, it is interesting to speculate about how the shape of the canon on film has been determined by the illustrations of James Tissot and Gustave Doré, operas such as Camille Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila (1877), and plays such as Oscar Wilde’s Salomé (1891).18 While classic works of art have wielded some influence, these more easily accessible works, particularly those of Tissot and Doré, were likely far more influential. Not only was Tissot a contemporary of the earliest filmmakers, but illustrated Bibles by both men were wildly popular during the silent period, particularly after the posthumous publication of a collection of Tissot’s biblical works in 1904. Many early filmmakers in this era copied Tissot’s compositions, basing their sets and costumes on his work, and using his name to publicize their work. It is not hard to imagine that this may also have extended to their selection of source material, which itself went on to influence the choices of later filmmakers. Secondly, while it is commonly assumed that our own era gives women the greatest voice, in this field the data does not bear this out. The silent era saw far greater gender parity: female directors such as Alice Guy Blaché were commonplace and roughly half of the scriptwriters and editors were female. Even more striking is this period’s inclusion of episodes that have a more prominent female perspective and their subsequent decline. During this earliest period, in addition to frequent appearances by Delilah, Mary, Mary Magdalene, and occasionally Esther, films appeared about Jael, the Shunamite woman, and Athaliah; the deuterocanonical stories of Judith and Susanna; and gospel episodes such as the woman of Samaria, the daughter of Herodias, and the once almost ever-present Veronica. Aside from Jesus’s mother, female characters in Bible films have tended to represent a threat to the patriarchal order. As these films “shape contemporary viewers’ ideas about biblical women,” it is extremely disappointing that fair representation in biblical films has regressed from being present, albeit problematically, to being increasingly absent (Exum 1996: 13). Finally, the degree to which the ebb and flow of technological development and economic opportunity have had an impact on the canon’s adaptation is striking. The initial burst of activity that accompanied the new moving pictures technology led to a diverse and relatively democratic range of films, as independent filmmakers with vastly differing motives flourished. In contrast, the development of talking pictures is associated with the most barren era in terms of the volume and popularity of biblical films. The invention of television in the middle of the twentieth century and the emergence of cheaper video-capable cameras in our own era have been accompanied by many of the lesser stories finding their voices. This technological ebbing and flowing reflects the broader punctuated equilibrium, which typifies both the evolution of the canon’s adaptation on film, but also the changing story of the canon itself. It took around 350 years for the longer Roman Catholic canon to be agreed upon, but of course that is only part of the story. After the Great Schism in 1054, alterations continued in parts of the Eastern Church. For example, the Armenian Bible continued to include 3 Corinthians and reject Revelation

284

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

until around 1200. In the West, things changed again during the sixteenth century as the Reformers rejected the deuterocanonical books and questioned works such as the “right strawy” James.19 More recently, different versions of the Syrian Church’s Peshitta (New Testament) continued to include either twenty-two or twenty-seven books right up to the early 1900s. Even in our own day, many push for the inclusion of some books such as the Gospel of Thomas while others question whether ethically problematic books such as Joshua are still worthy of a place. The canon on film has been present for only a fraction of that time and yet the popularity of the different stories has varied considerably during that time and will continue to ebb and flow into the future. While it seems likely that Jephthah’s cinematic heyday has come and gone, perhaps it is only a matter of time until Habakkuk: the Movie becomes famed for breaking box office records and reviving the genre once again.

Notes 1 Canons, of course, vary from religious community to community. This discussion focuses on the Protestant canon with some attention to deuterocanonical and apocryphal material. 2 This information comes from various sources, including Verreth ([1995] 2014), Shepherd (2013), Dumont (2009), Campbell and Pitts (1981), Abel (1994), Solomon ([1978] 2001), and Williams (2009). 3 Of course, some films adapt a biblical text word for word, including The New Media Bible’s Luke (1979) and Genesis (1979); the Visual Bible’s Matthew (1993), Acts (1994), and The Gospel of John (2003); and the Lumo Project’s John (2014), Mark (2016), Luke (2016), and the as yet unreleased Matthew. Some others, while not so literal, substantively adapt a single book, for example, Il vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 1964). 4 Not least because certain films actually span the divides between specific books. 5 This spelling is taken from the film’s English-subtitled version. 6 Indeed filmed stage productions of operas such as Verdi’s Nabucco (1842), Richard Strauss’s Salome (1905), and Camille Saint-Saëns Samson et Dalila (1877) have contributed substantially to the cinematic representation of such stories, most notably in the silent and contemporary eras. 7 This is not counting the six films about Herodias’s daughter, which could also be considered to be stories from Jesus’s ministry. 8 Around half of the thirty Jesus films from this era depict Jesus’s death, but twenty include at least one incident from his ministry and of those, only nine feature both Jesus’s ministry and death (excluding the six films about Herodias’s daughter). 9 While Griffith’s work is not as influential as sometimes claimed, Intolerance was an important film for Bible movies. Before it they were largely small, pious affairs adapting the stories from the Bible in a fairly simple manner. Afterward they became grand spectacles, like the works of DeMille and Curtiz. And when the silent era ended Bible films went back into their shell for a little while. 10 Shortly afterward Kertész moved to America, produced another biblical epic (Noah’s Ark 1928), changed his name to Michael Curtiz, and produced some of Hollywood’s most enduring movies such as The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Casablanca (1941).



Can We Try that Again?: The Fate of the Biblical Canon on Film

285

11 The exceptions are the stories of David and Noah, which were covered in David and Bathsheba (1951) and The Bible (1966) respectively. 12 Reportedly, Ridley Scott is also making a David series, though it has no title as of yet. 13 Lang focuses on 118 “biblical films shown in theatres for paying audiences” (2007: 11). 14 It can be argued, of course, that the cut-off point chosen for the end of this era skews the data somewhat. But something about the release of Samson and Delilah (1949) feels different from the films made in this period, and, from that point on, the rate of production of Bible films picked up significantly. 15 Three of these stories were split across different nights, leading some sources to cite seventeen episodes. 16 Even the television miniseries Jesus of Nazareth (1977) gave the resurrection short shrift, particularly in light if its six-hour-plus runtime. 17 For a detailed analysis of the film’s scenes and their sources, see Chattaway (2016b). 18 As the Victorian Bible-related novels such as Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur (1880) and Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis? (1895) have a more incidental relationship to the biblical material, their impact on the subsequent selection of biblical material for adaptation is limited. 19 From Luther’s 1522 “Introduction to the New Testament,” though this comment was omitted from later editions of Luther’s Bible (cited in Ropes 1916: 106).

Works cited Abel, Richard (1994), The Cine Goes to Town, Berkeley: University of California Press. Babington, Bruce, and Peter William Evans (1993), Biblical Epics: Sacred Narrative in the Hollywood Cinema, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Boillat, Alain, and Valentine Robert (2016), “La Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur JésusChrist (1902–05): Tableau Variation in the Early Cinema,” in David Shepherd (ed.), The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897–1927), 24–59, New York and London: Routledge. Campbell, Richard H., and Michael R. Pitts (1981), The Bible on Film: A Checklist, 1897–1980, Metuchen: Scarecrow. Celli, Carlo, and Marga Cottino-Jones (2001), A New Guide to Italian Cinema, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Chattaway, Peter T. (2016a), “10 Obscure Gospel Moments Most Jesus Films Miss,” Christianity Today, February 22. Available online: http://www.christianitytoday. com/ct/2016/february-web-only/10-obscure-moments-most-jesus-films-miss.html (accessed November 27, 2016). Chattaway, Peter T. (2016b), “The Young Messiah: A Scene Guide,” FilmChat, March 18. Available online: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/filmchat/2016/03/the-young-messiaha-scene-guide-w-clips-and-references-to-the-scriptures-the-apocryphal-texts-and-thenovel.html (accessed November 27, 2016). Doré, Gustave (1866), La Grande Bible de Tours, Tours: Mame. Dumont, Hervé (2009), L’antiquité au cinema: Vérités, légendes et manipulations. Paris: Nouveau Monde Editions. Elley, Derek (1984), The Epic Film: Myth and History, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk: St. Edmundsbury Press. Exum, Cheryl (1996), Plotted, Shot, and Painted: Cultural Representations of Biblical Women, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic.

286

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Forshey, Gerald E. (1992), American Religious and Biblical Spectaculars, Westport: Praeger. Gevinson, Alan (1997), Within Our Gates: Ethnicity in American Feature Films, 1911– 1960, Berkeley: University of California Press. Kinnard, Roy, and Tim Davis (1992), Divine Images: A History of Jesus on the Screen, New York: Citadel–Carol. Lang, J. Stephen (2007), The Bible on the Big Screen: A Guide from Silent Films to Today’s Movies, Grand Rapids: Baker. Richards, Jeffrey (2008), Hollywood Ancient Worlds, London: Continuum. Ropes, James Hardy (1916), A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle of St. James, International Critical Commentary 42, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Runions, Erin (2016), “The Temptation of Noah: The Debate about Patriarchal Violence in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah,” in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (ed.), The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of Biblical Reception in Film, Vol. 2, 827–44, Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception 2, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Shepherd, David J. (2013), The Bible on Silent Film: Spectacle, Story and Scripture in the Early Cinema, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sienkiewicz, Henryk (1895), Quo Vadis? A Narrative of the Time of Nero, trans. Jeremiah Curtin and W. S. Kuniczak, New York: Little, Brown. Solomon, Jon ([1978] 2001), The Ancient World in the Cinema. Rev. and exp. ed., New Haven: Yale University Press. Tissot, J. James (1897), The Life of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, 2 vols., London: Sampson, Low, Marston. Tissot, J. James (1904), The Old Testament, London: M. de Brunoff. Verreth, Herbert ([1995] 2014), “De oudheid in film. Filmografie,” Leuven. Available online: http://bib.kuleuven.be/artes/oudheid/films (accessed March 13, 2016). Wallace, Lew (1880), Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, New York: Harper Brothers. Walsh, Richard (2005), Finding St. Paul in Film, New York: T&T Clark. Walsh, Richard (2016), “Paul and the Early Church in Film,” in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (ed.), The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of Biblical Reception in Film, Vol. 2, 497–516, Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception 2, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Williams, Tyler (2009), “The Old Testament on Film,” Codex. Available online: http:// biblical-studies.ca/old-testament-on-film.html (accessed November 27, 2016).

23

Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow: Noah’s Flood in Recent Hollywood Films Adele Reinhartz

The rapidly growing area of Bible and film is often situated within the context of the reception history of the Bible. As Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch notes in the introduction to her two-volume anthology The Bible in Motion, “Film, as the dominant narrative mode in contemporary culture, has become one of the most powerful vehicles for the production and dissemination of biblical texts in the (post)modern world” (2016: 2). The reception-history approach traces the ways in which films use the Bible to reflect, and to reflect on, films’ particular historical, cultural, national, and social contexts, or, more accurately, the filmmakers’ stance toward the issues emerging within their own contexts. From this perspective, for example, The Ten Commandments (1956) is not only a cinematic commentary on the Exodus narrative but also a cold war document warning against the Red Menace of Soviet communism; Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) is not only an adaptation of the gospel stories but a meditation on the civil rights movement, the Six-Day War, and the cult of celebrity; and Jésus de Montréal (1989) is not merely a contemporary retelling of the passion narrative but also a critique of the Catholic Church’s role in Quebec.1 The reception-historical approach to film analysis is a fruitful enterprise, in that it allows not only for the study of the intricate relationship between the Bible and its film adaptations, but also for the examination of the Bible’s role in the intertwined arenas of popular culture, contemporary society, and the public square.2 For biblical scholars, however, the study of Bible and film also raises a less-studied but nevertheless reasonable question: in using the Bible for their own narrative and thematic purposes, do such movies also provide insight into the biblical texts themselves? In a series of books examining Bible-related novels and their cinematic adaptations, Larry Kreitzer “reverses the hermeneutical flow” by looking not only at how these artistic works use the Bible—the usual hermeneutical direction—but also at how they foster understanding of the Bible. In these books, Kreitzer aims “to reverse the flow of influence within the hermeneutical process” by examining select biblical passages or themes “in light of some of the enduring expressions of our own culture, namely great literary works and their film adaptations” (1993:19).

288

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Kreitzer argues that reversing the hermeneutical flow allows us to “plot some of the ways in which our understanding of the diversity of meaning inherent in biblical texts can be brought out into the open by examining key works of literature and their cinematic adaptations” (2002: 15–16). Not surprisingly, Kreitzer concludes that “there is a great deal to be gained in terms of our understanding of the Bible by an examination of the ways in which biblical ideas, themes and motifs are picked up, used, reworked and creatively adapted by later generations of writers and film-makers” (1999: 39). Here I will follow Kreitzer’s lead by reversing the hermeneutical flow with regard to three films that, in different ways, retell the story of Noah’s flood (Gen. 6–9). The films are Darren Aronofsky’s Noah (2014), Tom Shadyac’s Evan Almighty (2007), and Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom (2012). In addition to providing brief analyses of these film’s major themes in relation to the biblical account, I will evaluate the principle that underlies this approach, and ask: Do the films that make use of the Flood story in their plots, characters, and visual vocabulary illuminate aspects of the biblical story that might not otherwise be apparent? Contrary to some criticisms (see Romanowski and Vander Heide 2007), reversing the hermeneutical flow does not require us to set aside our prior knowledge of the biblical stories upon which they draw. The films themselves presume that viewers are familiar with the flood story, whether directly from the Bible, or from other sources, such as children’s books or other movies. Indeed, to assess the value of reversing the hermeneutical flow, it is necessary first to follow that flow from the biblical deluge to its cinematic adaptations. This requires us to look briefly at the biblical story. On that basis we can then compare the emphases of these three films with those of the biblical story, and, finally, consider whether these films provide a lens through which to gain new insights into the biblical story itself.

Noah’s flood (Gen. 6:5-9:28) The main plot of the biblical account is easily told. After creating the world, including animals and human beings (Gen. 1–3), God is dismayed by human wickedness (6:5) and regrets deeply that “he had made humankind on the earth” (6:6). God resolves to destroy not only humans but also “animals and creeping things and birds of the air.” But as the very fact of this story’s, and its readers’, existence demonstrates, God does not carry out this plan to the letter. In view of Noah’s righteousness (6:8), God decides on a “do-over”: saving Noah and his family (Noah’s wife, sons, and son’s wives), and saving two (6:19; 7:9), or perhaps seven (7:2), pairs of each animal species, God ensures that the world will be repopulated after the destructive flood has receded. After forty days of rainfall, and an additional 150 days of floating on the waters, the ark comes to rest on Mount Ararat (8:4). Some months later, when the waters have abated, Noah tests the waters, so to speak, by sending out a bird, to determine when it was safe to exit the ark. Approximately two weeks later (compare 8:10, 12), when the bird does not return, Noah releases the animals and he and his family leave the ark. He builds an altar, receives the divine blessing and the promise of divine covenant, symbolized by a rainbow (9:12-17), plants a vineyard (9:20), and gets drunk (9:21).



Noah’s Flood in Recent Hollywood Films

289

Like other biblical stories, this narrative does not give us access to Noah’s thoughts and feelings, let alone those of his family members. No human character has a speaking part until after the flood story itself is over (Gen. 9:25-27). Noah voices neither agreement nor disagreement with God’s plan to destroy and rebuild the world’s population of animals, fish, fowl, and humans. Much of the narrative describes the plan for repopulation, the construction project, the large-scale death of animals and people, and the ensuing storm. The story illustrates God’s absolute control over nature. The main themes are divine disappointment with and regret over the wickedness of human kind, and the promise that such destruction will never again occur.

Cinematic treatments Noah, Evan Almighty, and Moonrise Kingdom all employ visual imagery, plot elements, and explicit references to the biblical flood narrative. They also, however, use that story to reflect on two contemporary themes that play no explicit role in the biblical account: the environment and the family.

Noah (2014) Like the great biblical epics of the 1950s, Noah sets out to retell the biblical account itself. It is set in an unspecified but archaic epoch and its plot follows the biblical story’s basic outline: divine realization of human wickedness, followed by the command that Noah (Russell Crowe) build the ark, and then populate it with pairs of living creatures as well as his immediate family. The film depicts the fierce storm, its abatement, and, briefly, the aftermath. Like other Bible movies, Noah also embellishes considerably, by adding characters and plot elements, some of which contradict the biblical narrative. One major embellishment pertains to the wicked humans led by Cain’s descendant Tubal-Cain (Gen. 4:22), who threaten Noah’s family. The film provides the backstory to this enmity: Tubal-Cain killed Noah’s father Lamech. A second concerns the Watchers: large stone creatures with a kernel of light, who help Noah take on Tubal-Cain and the forces of evil. Unlike the army of Tubal-Cain, the Watchers are not a filmmakers’ creation. They are mentioned in the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36). 1 Enoch 6–11 identifies the Watchers with the fallen angels of Gen. 6:1-4, who marry human women and beget violent giants, the Nephilim. According to 1 Enoch, the Watchers therefore bear some responsibility for the human wickedness that causes God to plot the destruction of the species (see Gen. 6:5).3 The film provides a somewhat different backstory. As Og, one of the Watchers, explains, the Watchers stood beside God as God formed humankind. Struck by “man’s” beauty, the Watchers were surprised that God banished them from Eden for one small act of disobedience. They descended to earth to teach and to help humankind. But humans turned this knowledge against the earth, damaging the ground, water, air, and

290

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

beasts, and then they turned against the Watchers themselves. Despite their desperate entreaties, God refused to help the Watchers. Noah befriends Og and the other Watchers, and they become instrumental in the fight against Noah’s enemies. This element, while commendable perhaps for its use of noncanonical sources, confuses matters, by raising the question: Why is God so angry with humankind that God is ready to destroy them all, if the Watchers are at least partly to blame? The most important reversal of the biblical story concerns Noah’s beliefs about the fate of humankind. Noah believes that his divinely given role is to ensure the destruction of the human species while preventing the extinction of the world’s nonhuman populations. Human wickedness is manifested primarily in its destructive exploitation of the natural environment, spoliation of the land, and the killing of animals for food. As they begin to build the ark, Noah explains to his children: “Men are going to be punished for what they have done to this world. There will be destruction. There will be tragedy. Our family has been chosen for a great task. We have been chosen to save the innocent. . . . The animals.” One child asks: “Why are they innocent?” Another child answers: “Because they still live as they did in the Garden.” Implied is the point that, by contrast, humankind is no longer innocent, and no longer worth saving, because they have strayed from their lives in Eden. Tubal-Cain’s behavior illustrates the point. Whereas Noah’s family respects animals and the environment, Tubal-Cain exploits the environment for his own purposes. His attitude is grounded in a sense of divine abandonment: “The Creator does not care what happens in this world. . . . We are alone. . . . Cursed to struggle by the sweat of our brow to survive. Damned if I don’t do everything it takes to do just that! [spits] Damned if I don’t take what I want!” Despite his wife Naameh’s protests, Noah ultimately concludes he and his family are also wicked, and doomed: “We’re no different. We were weak and we were selfish to think we could set ourselves apart. We will work, complete the task and then we will die, the same as everyone else.” Noah’s conviction is a plausible interpretation of God’s words in Gen. 6:5–7:5, which refer only to humankind’s destruction and the measures to be taken to ensure the survival of the nonhuman species. Nevertheless, after the flood, God blesses Noah and his sons and commands them, as he commanded the first couple (Gen. 1:28) to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Gen. 9:1). Presumably Noah’s sons will initiate this repopulation; all subsequent hearers and readers of the story are evidence of God’s mercy toward humankind despite their wickedness. In Genesis, Noah’s three sons have wives who accompany them onto the ark. In the film, however, the boys are young and, initially, unattached. Noah’s belief that humankind must die out creates tension with his two older sons. Shem (Douglas Booth) becomes attached to Ila (Emma Watson), a young woman raised by Noah and Naameh (Jennifer Connelly) and who accompanies them onto the ark. Ila becomes pregnant, and precipitates a crisis: How is Noah to fulfill God’s will to destroy humankind if she gives birth? He decides that if her twins are boys they will live, if girls, they will die. Noah blames his family for this extreme emotional dilemma: “Have you any idea what you’ve done? All those lives, all those people? For nothing. Do you know what this forces me to do?”



Noah’s Flood in Recent Hollywood Films

291

Noah’s middle son Ham (Logan Lerman) also strongly desires a female partner. He falls in love with Na’el (Madison Davenport), a young woman from Tubal-Cain’s clan. But while escaping from the chaos of battle, the girl gets caught in an animal trap. Noah refuses to rescue her with consequences the film develops as a minor plot motif. Not surprisingly, Noah’s determination to ensure that his line dies out with his sons is the main source of conflict that drives the plot forward and constitutes the heart of the film’s emotional impact. Noah sees his inability to kill his granddaughters as a sign of weakness. “I looked down on those two little girls and all I had in my heart was love.” And it is this that accounts for his drunkenness after the flood. He believes he has failed both his family and God. In the end, Ila provides Noah with a new perspective: “He chose you for a reason, Noah. He showed you the wickedness of man and knew you would not look away. But then you saw goodness, too. The choice was put in your hands because he put it there. He asked you to decide if we were worth saving. And you chose mercy. You chose love. He has given us a second chance. Be a father. Be a grandfather. Help us to do better this time. Help us start again.” Throughout this speech, the camera cuts between Ila’s face and images of animal mothers and offspring; the message is that humankind is another animal species that deserves to start again. Noah accepts this perspective and, in a nod to feminism, he gives to Ila’s twin baby girls the same command that God had given to the primordial couple (Gen. 1:28): “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.” As Noah looks up, the heavens burst forth in glorious sound and color, with multiple rainbows and a giant eye, all signifying divine approval. Finally Noah has understood what God truly wanted of him. This divine display confirms the restoration of Noah’s family, though the healing is not complete given that Ham leaves the family to wander on his own. In the final analysis, the female appeal to connectedness, love, and emotion triumph over the male’s rigid determination.

Evan Almighty (2007) Evan Almighty, a stand-alone spin-off of Tom Shadyac’s 2003 Bruce Almighty, follows the sudden rise of Evan Baxter (Steve Carell), a local television news reporter who, to his own surprise, is elected to Congress on the slogan “Change the world!” Evan moves his family to a large, luxurious home in the aptly named (fictional) suburb of Prestige Crest, Virginia. He is self-impressed but also anxiously insecure. A senior congressman, Chuck Long (John Goodman), takes Evan under his wing, providing him with an enviable office and the opportunity to junior co-sponsor the Public Land Act bill that will allow for commercial development of private lands. At the same time, however, Evan’s life takes a bizarre turn. The number 614 appears everywhere—on his alarm clock, and on his new government plate and phone extension. Large quantities of gopher wood are delivered to his house, along with old-fashioned manual tools. Pairs of animals and birds begin to follow him around Washington. His rapidly growing beard quickly regrows every time he shaves it

292

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

off. Other lots on his street are purchased in his name. And most disconcertingly, a congenial man in a white suit appears to him when he least expects it, claiming to be God. Evan soon realizes that all these factors indicate God has chosen him to be a latter-day Noah, and is demanding—gently but firmly—that he build an ark to save the animals and the people from the flood that will take place on September 22. Evan soon becomes a laughingstock, and incurs Congressman Long’s wrath. He is suspended from Congress, and removed from the Land Act bill. In the end, of course, the flood takes place as scheduled. Evan—and God—are vindicated, Evan is reinstated as a congressman, and family harmony is restored. God reveals that the ark—Acts of Random Kindness—holds the secret to achieving Evan’s stated goal as a congressman: to change the world. As in Noah, Evan Almighty attributes the flood to human exploitation of the environment. Here, however, God predicts, but does not cause the flood, and, through Noah, takes proactive steps to insure the survival of the human and animal species. Congressman Long represents politicians who override the public good and cut corners to maximize profit. This theme comes through most poignantly in a scene in which God shows Evan the pristine beauty of the valley below Prestige Crest prior to its development as a prime residential area for Washington-based politicians and other wealthy residents. As Evan becomes engrossed in his ark construction, and his appearance begins to resemble the biblical Noah (of illustrated Bibles and children’s books), his aides also look into matters. They inform him that “Prestige Crest used to be federal lands, but what’s interesting is how it got into private hands. Congressman Long got the approval to build a damn and then passed out the surrounding lands to a group of private investors.” Further, “the locals fought this thing for years. They said Long and his developer buddies were cutting corners, like skipping important building code checkpoints.” Congressman Long’s Land Use bill, which Evan had agreed to sponsor, will treat national parks similarly. Prior to God’s appearance, Evan himself was oblivious to these issues. For example, when the building contractor asks him to choose between maple and old growth Brazilian cherry kitchen cabinets (“If you’re not sensitive to that ‘save the forest’ stuff ”), Evan chooses the cherry. When Congressman Long and two supporters wonder what all the birds are doing in his office, Evan (who cannot shake the birds off his arms, his head, and his desk) blurts out: “Man needs to dominate creatures . . . [and] dictate what happens in this country. God Bless America!” Long’s concerns about Evan’s allegiances are allayed and one of his colleagues explains: “We lost a huge project last year because of the red headed woodpecker. Those environmentalists got so up in arms about the potential disappearance of one stupid bird. Yeah, birds are stupid sometimes. We lost over 25 million dollars in business.” Beneath the comedy is a critique of corporate America that views the economic gains derived from the destructive exploitation of the natural world as evidence that God has blessed America. By the time he has finished building the ark, however, Evan has reversed his position and also found himself capable of speaking truth to power, like the stereotypical biblical prophet. When Long demands that he destroy the ark immediately, Evan challenges him: “How much money did you make off all this land? You are destroying our national parks for profit.”



Noah’s Flood in Recent Hollywood Films

293

Long: “Do you have a problem with somebody taking a little profit? It’s called business, son. So if I need to get a message out there to get a congressman elected, there are people who pay for it, and yes, those people want this bill to happen, and by God, its gonna happen. . . . I’m going to give you one last chance. Take down this boat.” Evan: “I’m giving you one last chance. Repent!” Long: “Such a shame, you had possibilities. But, if you want to stop progress to save the earth, go for it. Good luck getting a tree to come to the polls.”

In contrast to Russell Crowe’s Noah, who insists that all humankind must die in the flood, Evan tries to save as many people as possible. As the dam breaks, and the crowds and press realize that what they had dismissed as Evan’s delusion is happening, Evan urges everyone to board the ark. Furthermore, this flood, unlike Noah’s, does not affect the whole world, but just this valley and its environs. Finally, here, in contrast to both Noah and Genesis, the flood is not divinely ordered, but foreseeable consequence of the corners humans cut when building the dam that allowed for the development of public lands for private profit. The Baxter family, like Noah’s family in Noah, frays, due to Evan’s extreme devotion to his new job. Shortly after entering office, Evan cancels a long-awaited family hike to work through Congressman Long’s bill. Joan is upset; the kids are philosophical: “New house, same old dad.” Joan decides to take the boys away for a while. On the road, they stop at a diner where one of the servers—gives her a theological pep talk: Let me ask you something. If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If they pray for courage, does God give them courage, or does he give them opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for their family to be closer, you think God zaps them with warm, fuzzy feelings? Or does he give them opportunities to love each other? Well, I got to run. A lot of people to serve. Enjoy.

The speaker, of course, is God, the one engaging with Evan all along. Joan starts home, and thereby, takes a giant step in answering her own prayer. The boys, and the animals, work with Evan to build the ark. At the end, after the flood has receded, the family finally goes on that hike. Evan’s priorities, and family harmony, have been restored, and environmental disaster—the Land Use bill—has been averted.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012) Wes Anderson’s delightful Moonrise Kingdom is set on a fictional New England island called New Penzance, during the fall of 1965—a season of hurricanes (see Zielinski and Keim 2003). The film’s climactic, violent storm is announced at the film’s outset by a genial if anonymous meteorologist who describes the island (“16 miles long, forested

294

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

with old growth pine and maple, criss-crossed by shallow tidal creeks, Chocktaw territory”) and informs us that “we are on the far edge of Black Beacon Sound, famous for the ferocious and well-documented storm which will strike from the east on the 5th of September, in three days time.” The film unfolds in this three-day period, and revolves around a prepubescent love “affair” between two “problem” children. Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman), a “Khaki Scout” summer camper, is an orphan who has been shunted from foster home to foster home due to his erratic behavior; his fellow scouts ostracize and bully him. Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward), who lives on the island with her family, is prone to violent outbursts that get her into trouble with her parents, her teachers, and other children. After meeting during a performance of Benjamin Britten’s children’s opera, Noye’s Fludde, at the local church, St. Jack’s, they become pen pals and confidantes. As the film opens, Sam and Suzy run off in search of a secluded cove rumored to be an old native encampment. Difficult, and violent, as their interactions might be with others, Sam and Suzy are unfailingly courteous and gentle with each other. While on their journey, they discuss their hopes for the future. Sam then says, “We can’t predict the exact future.” Suzy: “That’s true.” Sam: “It’s possible I may wet the bed, by the way. Later, I mean.” Suzy: “Ok.” Sam: “I wish I didn’t have to mention it, but just in case. I don’t want to make you be offended.” Suzy: “Of course I won’t.”

Parents, scoutmaster, scouts, and the local policeman, Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis), finally find the pair camping at the cove. Suzy’s parents forbid her from seeing Sam again; Captain Sharp takes Sam in temporarily until “Social Services” (Tilda Swinton) can pick him up and deliver him to an institution where he will be treated with electroshock therapy. In a scene featuring a paper-mache dummy (in homage to The Shawshank Redemption [1994] and The Truman Show [1998]),4 the children escape, aided by the same scouts who had formerly bullied Sam. At the time announced by the meteorologist, a hurricane and flash flooding hit the region. Adults and children alike seek sanctuary in St. Jack’s Church where, coincidentally, Britten’s Noye’s Fludde is being performed again. Suddenly the adults realize that Suzy and Sam are absent. They have gone outside in the violent storm, and climbed up onto the bell tower, vowing to jump into the water so that they can be together. Captain Sharp climbs up to talk them down. After a hurried telephone conversation with “Social Services,” who after a terrifying trip has also sought refuge in the church, Captain Sharp tells Sam that he has permission to become his foster father, and asks him, with great respect, whether he agrees. Sam seeks Suzy’s guidance; with one look she indicates her approval, and as the film closes, Suzy is back at home, and Sam, now living with Captain Sharp, spends his days with her and her family. Moonrise Kingdom, like the other two films, draws some of its plot and imagery from the biblical flood story. At least, it features a violent storm and flood that wreaks



Noah’s Flood in Recent Hollywood Films

295

havoc on the land, an ark in which people and animals (or rather, people and children dressed as animals), and a resolution that guarantees the survival of the innocent (children) and the adults, with all their foibles, and restores the physical and social worlds to their primordial harmony. On the physical level the destruction is impersonal; it cannot be attributed to human wickedness or to divine will. It simply happens. But the meteorological events represent the emotional and social catastrophes that have led Sam and Suzy to cling to each other. The storm was devastating. The meteorologist-narrator marvels, however, that “harvest yields the following autumn far exceeded any previously recorded and the quality of the crops was said to be extraordinary.” Similarly, we viewers are soothed by the emotional harmony and abundance that Sam and Suzy experience in the storm’s aftermath. The theme of family, both natural and chosen or other social relationships, is central. This is signaled by the opening scene. The very first image is of a painting, in naive style, of a red seaside house surrounded by trees and shrubs. The camera then pans horizontally past other objects hanging on the wall to an image of the landing, where we see a young boy in pajamas come up the stairs, go into a different room, and set up his portable record player. Soon we hear the beginning of Benjamin Britten’s “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.” The camera continues to pan horizontally as we see his two brothers, beckoned by the sound, and then his older sister, dressed, striding purposefully to the window with her kitten, and don her binoculars. She joins her brothers, who are sitting cross-legged on the floor around the record player. She sits on the window seat behind them and picks up a book to read, one of them but somewhat apart. She closes the book, opens the curtain, and looks out the window with her binoculars, as the camera moves back and now shows us that they are all inside the same house that was pictured in the opening shot’s painting. The camera moves upward, until we see Suzy standing at the window of the tower, looking out onto a field with her binoculars. Soon we learn that she is awaiting Sam, and the beginning of their adventure together. They will both leave their dysfunctional environments, to seek comfort in each other. By the film’s end, they have both found home, not with each other as they are too young, but appropriate homes, Suzy back with a family that has somehow incorporated her fully, and Sam now with a loving foster father. Sam and Suzy can be together as often as they want—daily—as children and loving friends. Upon reflection, we may conclude that the opening image’s painting is by Sam, who now spends his days, painting, at Suzy’s house and in the company of her and her family.

Reversing the hermeneutical flow These films, like all other Bible-related films, are amenable to a reception-history approach; certainly they say more about the twenty-first century, and its concerns for the environment and changing notions of family, than they do about the Bible. The flood story is amenable to contemporary use for at least two reasons. First, it is a familiar story. Even people who had not read Genesis are likely to know its basic

296

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

outline from children’s books or even other popular culture references. Second, as a catastrophic event that had an impact on the natural and human worlds alike, the flood can represent other natural and human catastrophes. It provokes reflection about potential environmental disasters that are caused, as in Noah and Evan Almighty, by human greed and indifference. And it can symbolize other, less spectacular but nevertheless devastating situations faced by children who do not neatly conform to family and societal expectations. In these films, the harmony restored in human relationships mirrors the harmony restored to the world after the flood waters recede, the animals and people leave the ark, and, most importantly, God sends the rainbow as a token of his promise never to send another flood. The three films’ focus on family, like the focus on the environment, has a decidedly twenty-first-century configuration. Noah and Evan Almighty, despite their very different chronological settings, reflect the contemporary stereotype of hard-working, ambitious, and controlling husbands who are distant from their unhappy wives and children. In these two films, the flood provides an occasion for rethinking priorities and promoting familial harmony. In both cases, this adjustment pleases God. Noah implies that on his own, Noah had misunderstood God’s intention in bringing the flood; his wife and daughter-inlaw, in contrast, understand that what is required is love, not death. In accepting this, Noah sets things right within his family, and for the world. Evan Almighty depicts Joan’s desire for a close-knit family as one of God’s motivations for the flood, or, more precisely, it suggests that God views the restoration of family harmony as an excellent outcome of the flood that is going to happen anyway. Moonrise Kingdom too is situated squarely within a contemporary mode, by portraying a child who feels misunderstood and unappreciated by her family, and another who has fallen through the holes in the social safety net to the point where he is in danger of institutionalization and electroshock therapy. The storm brings Suzy a reconciliation with her family, and a new, respectful, and loving, father for Sam, the latter, almost incidentally, providing a salve for the Captain’s loneliness. These elements, like the environmental theme, do not illuminate the biblical story as such, which evinces no interest in the flood’s impact on the relationships within Noah’s family. At the most, we might say that the family theme makes us realize what the flood narrative overlooks or conceals: that the flood was a crisis not only for those who died but also for the sole remnants of the human species left behind. And certainly these films make the most of the gaps in the biblical story. In different ways, Noah and Evan Almighty provide scripts for undeveloped characters, such as Noah’s wife and  sons. They also explain how God communicated his wishes to Noah—in dreams and visions, according to Noah and face-to-face, according to Evan Almighty. All three films reflect in detail on the devastation’s impact on humankind. Nevertheless, do these films provide some insights into the biblical story itself? That is, after viewing these films, would we—whether closely familiar with Gen. 6–9 or not—have a deeper understanding of the biblical account? My answer is both yes and no. On the yes side: these films direct our attention to questions that the biblical story raises but leaves unanswered. One such question concerns the precise nature of human wickedness. Given God’s extreme response, the wicked acts must have been extreme



Noah’s Flood in Recent Hollywood Films

297

indeed, yet the relevant verses, Gen. 6:5 and 6:11, specify evil and violence but provide no specific information. Noah answers this question in environmental terms, and Evan Almighty more specifically in terms of the human qualities of greed and expediency that lead to environmental disaster. Moonrise Kingdom, by contrast, ignores this issue, implying that the tsunami was a natural disaster. Wes Anderson’s refusal to see either human or divine will behind the disaster allows us to perceive more clearly that the other two films accept the biblical story’s perspective, namely, that disasters are somehow divine punishment for human wickedness. Perhaps, then, it would be appropriate to query God’s role in the flood story itself. Perhaps Genesis’s attempt to explain disaster as the divine response to human wickedness is also simply a way to pin down random natural disasters, and perhaps thereby to keep such disasters from happening in the lives of those who told and who listened to these stories. Along these same lines, these movies draw our attention to the question of justice. Is it conceivable that every single human being aside from Noah and family was wicked enough to deserve death? And if not, how can a just God justify the death of the innocent along with the guilty? Abraham raises this same question when he learns of God’s plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. The biblical Noah does not express a similar concern (at least, it is not narrated), and, in fact, neither does Aronofsky’s Noah, who presumes that every human being is indeed guilty from the time that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit.5 Evan, however, tries to save as many people as possible, without judgment as to their moral status. Similarly, all Moonrise Kingdom’s characters gather into the church to be safe from the storm. These two films do not adopt the view that salvation is only for the “good” but rather assume, contrary to Aronofsky’s Noah, that humankind is not inherently wicked. Moonrise Kingdom’s focus on children stresses this point even more, by drawing attention to the innocence of children like Suzy and Sam who are so vulnerable to adults. But one does not need to watch these films to ask these questions or reflect on the uncertainties in the relationship between humankind and the natural world, or to ponder the reality that “bad things happen to good people.” In that sense, reversing the hermeneutical flow does not provide unique insights unavailable from Jewish and Christian commentaries on the flood narrative, or from other examples of its reception history such as Britten’s Noye’s Fludde itself.6 Nevertheless, given that many, perhaps most film-goers, will never engage in close study of the biblical text, these films provide a way into the fundamental questions that biblical narratives also raise. Cinematic use of the Bible to reflect on contemporary issues testifies to the Bible’s enduring role in contemporary Western society, not only as a resource for the Jewish and Christian faithful, but also as a profound reflection on enduring questions about human beings’ relationships with one another, and with the natural and animal world.

Notes 1 Numerous studies have examined these points. See, for example, Wright (2003), Goodacre (1999), and Testa (1995). For further discussion, see Reinhartz (2007 and 2013).

298

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

2 This has been my own approach, particularly in Reinhartz (2007). 3 For discussion of the film, its sources and its reception, see Kosior (2016) and Sanders 2014. For an introduction to the Watchers, see, for example, Argall (1995), Boccaccini (2002), Thom (1983), and Tigchelaar (1996). 4 For discussion, see Sanders (2014) and Kosior (2016); the sources are in the latter. 5 This point may allude to the Christian idea of original sin. On that idea, see Wiley (2002). 6 For a video presentation, see Noye’s Fludde Presented (2012). For a slide show, see “Noye’s Fludde: The Opera” (2012).

Works cited Argall, Randal A. (1995), 1 Enoch and Sirach: A Comparative Literary and Conceptual Analysis of the Themes of Revelation, Creation, and Judgment, Atlanta: Scholars. Boccaccini, Gabriele(ed.) (2002), The Origins of Enochic Judaism: Proceedings of the First Enoch Seminar, University of Michigan, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy, June 19-23, 2001, Torino: Silvio Zamorani editore. Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda (2016), “General Introduction: The Bible and Its Cinematic Reception,” in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (ed.), The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of the Bible and Its Reception, Vol. 1, 1–14. Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception 2, Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter. Goodacre, Mark (1999), “Do You Think You’re What They Say You Are? Reflections on Jesus Christ Superstar,” Journal of Religion & Film, 3 (1): 1–13. Available online: http:// digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol3/iss2/2/ (accessed January 12, 2017). Kosior, Wojciech (2016), “The Crimes of Love. The (Un)Censored Version of the Flood Story in Noah (2014),” Journal of Religion & Film, 20 (3). Available online: http:// digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1344&context=jrf (accessed January 12, 2017). Kreitzer, Larry J. (1993), The New Testament in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow, The Biblical Seminar 17, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic. Kreitzer, Larry J. (1999), Pauline Images in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic. Kreitzer, Larry J. (2002), Gospel Images in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow, London; New York: Sheffield Academic. Noye’s Fludde Presented at Christ United Methodist Church Greensboro, NC (2012). Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT01wqcfnps&feature=yout ube_gdata_player;%20%E2%80%9CNoyes%20Fludde%20in%20MOONRISE%20 KINGDOM,%E2%80%9D (accessed January 13, 2017). “Noye’s Fludde: The Opera at the Heart of Moonrise Kingdom” (2012), Focus Features. Available online: http://www.focusfeatures.com/Slideshow/Noyes_fludde_the_opera_ at_the_heart_of_moonrise_kingdom?film=moonrise_kingdom (accessed January 13, 2017). Reinhartz, Adele (2007), Jesus of Hollywood, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Reinhartz, Adele (2013), Bible and Cinema: An Introduction, New York/ London: Routledge. Romanowski, William, and Jennifer L. Vander Heide (2007), “Easier Said Than Done: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow in the Theology and Film Dialogue,” Journal of Communication & Religion, 30 (1): 40–64.



Noah’s Flood in Recent Hollywood Films

299

Sanders, Seth (2014), “Noah: The Movie,” Religion in the News, 15 (2). Available online: http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/csrpl/RINVol15No2/Noah%20The%20Movie.htm (accessed January 12, 2017). Testa, Bart (1995), “Arcand’s Double Twist Allegory: ‘Jesus of Montreal,’” in André Loiselle and Brian McIlroy (eds.), Auteur/Provocateur: The Films of Denys Arcand, 90–112, Westport: Greenwood. Thom, J. C. (1983), “Aspects of the Form, Meaning and Function of the Book of the Watchers,” Neotestamentica, 17: 40–48. Tigchelaar, Eibert J. C. (1996), Prophets of Old and the Day of the End: Zechariah, the Book of Watchers, and Apocalyptic, Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill. Wiley, Tatha (2002), Original Sin: Origins, Developments, Contemporary Meanings, New York: Paulist. Wright, Melanie Jane (2003), Moses in America: The Cultural Uses of Biblical Narrative, American Academy of Religion Cultural Criticism Series, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Zielinski, Gregory A., and Barry D. Keim (2003), New England Weather, New England Climate, Hanover: University of New Hampshire, Lebanon: University Press of New England.

24

A Genre(s) Approach to The Prince of Egypt P. Jennifer Rohrer-Walsh

Introduction In the academy, literature for youth—as works of art—fascinates too few scholars. Yet this literature encompasses the most dangerous and inspiring stories each of us will experience. When I invite students to revise our honors program’s great books curriculum list, I frequently receive suggestions from their youthful readings. So powerful are these stories that they continue to produce nightmares, tears, and desire well into adulthood. Plato, in The Republic, esteems literature for the young as the most important stories because of their foundational importance in forming citizens for the polis (Plato 2.377a–c.). His censorship may not be laudable, but at least he recognizes the long-term effect of children’s art. Here, I consider the possible value of the animated children’s film, The Prince of Egypt (1998), for its young viewers through the lens of four genres: biblical adaptation, Bildungsroman, epic, and myth. Each genre can potentially take young viewers on different journeys to different destinations. For example, as an adaptation of Exodus, does the film lead young viewers to a clear understanding of the divine? As a Bildungsroman, does the film realistically guide young viewers toward adulthood? As an epic, does the film illustrate the best of its people/nation? As a myth, does the film establish/support a healthy community?

Biblical adaptation What does The Prince of Egypt as a biblical adaptation offer its young viewers? While the question of film’s fidelity to biblical texts seems to mesmerize biblical scholars, literary critics working with adaptation strongly counsel taking each piece on its own merits (see Genette 1997; Sanders 2006; Quinn 2007).1 I follow the literary critics here. This approach also avoids the pitfall of valuing high art ([biblical]literature) over low art (both film and children’s literature) (Quinn 2007: 8; Leitch 2007: 1), a dichotomy that often wrongly relegates children’s animated films to the lowest possible artistic rung (Beck 2005: xii).2 Further, in the case of The Prince of Egypt, such a hasty



A Genre(s) Approach to The Prince of Egypt

301

preliminary valuation ignores the different audiences of the film—young viewers and their families—and the book of Exodus (targeted to a more adult audience). After all, a reason for a children’s adaptation of Exodus, like The Prince of Egypt, is the recognition that Exodus is, in some way, not quite “right” for children. The film must then necessarily differ from Exodus.3 Again, the fidelity approach can fail to appreciate the many layers of interpretation already enfolding some putative exemplar like the book of Exodus. Athalya Brenner rightly notes that animated films are “end products of chains of translations” (2007: 28; emphasis added). Thus, many adaptations/interpretations stand between Exodus and The Prince of Egypt and complicate any simple question of the film’s fidelity to the text. For example, Gustav Dore’s illustrated Bible, Monet’s paintings, and David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia inspired DreamWorks producer Jeffrey Katzenburg (cited in Russell 2004: 242). The 1956 The Ten Commandments and, by extension its important precursor, Dorothy Clarke Wilson’s 1949 novel Prince of Egypt, also influenced DreamWorks’s production.4 More importantly, in the attempt to create a biblical adaptation, DreamWorks hired almost six hundred experts: historians, scholars, archaeologists, and religious leaders of different faiths.5 The total effect is “a midrash . . . of the biblical text” (Dowell 1998). DreamWorks acknowledges Exodus as precursor and observes four changes on their part: Pharaoh’s wife adopts Moses, Moses kills the Egyptian overseer accidentally, Moses turns the staff into a snake, and Aaron doubts Moses.6 I am interested, however, only in DreamWorks’s (mis)representations of the divine—through voice, music, dialogue, and iconography—and there only in what the film might or might not communicate to children. This is the issue that makes or breaks The Prince of Egypt as a successful biblical adaptation for its young viewer. Unquestionably, the directors struggled with creating the voice of God (Dowell 1998). DreamWorks’s initial merging of men, women, and children’s voices to create the divine voice was scrapped because it “smacked of pantheism” and “sounded like Hal from 2001” (Dowell 1998). So the decision was made to employ Val Kilmer’s voice as both Moses’s and the divine’s because it sounded like “the kind of voice we hear inside our own heads in our everyday lives” (Buskin 1999). Choosing the voice of Kilmer/Moses for the voice of the divine is one of the most significant alterations of the biblical story’s message (and not mentioned at all by DreamWorks) because it invites viewers to substitute modern subjectivity for the transcendent divine. Songs and dialogue also conflate the divine and mortal. Take, for example, the powerful song “Deliver Us!” that bookends the film. At first, the song is sung to the absent Elohim7 while we see slaves toiling. Next, Moses’s mother sings it at the river as she releases her baby in the basket. Does her song implore the river, Elohim, or (prophetically) her baby son? In the following scene, Miriam watches an Egyptian woman rescue her brother to whom Miriam sings, “Deliver us!” Is she singing to the woman or (prophetically) to Moses? So far, the film’s song offers the divine, the river, a woman, and Moses as potential deliverers. Later, as brother and sister are united, Miriam cautions Moses: “God saved you to be our deliverer. And you are our deliverer.” Later, Moses delivers Tzipporah and other harassed women, as Jethro recognizes. Next, “Deliver Us!” plays when Moses—without any representation of the divine—leads

302

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

his people past the Egyptian monuments. At the end of the film, the Hebrews sing, “Deliver us!” to Moses, their designated savior. This primarily extradiegetic music informs the viewers of the savior’s identity.8 While Moses never declares himself to be the deliverer, the singing of “Deliver us!” ultimately proclaims Moses, not Elohim, as the Hebrews’ deliverer. As such, young viewers could not possibly learn Torah’s lesson of divine sovereignty. In addition, the movie references the divine in various images. Unfortunately, for a young audience, the iconography is too inconsistent to denote the divine. The use of fire to represent the divine provides a good example. In the first scene when the divine speaks (in Kilmer’s voice) to Moses, declaring, “I am that I am,” young viewers see a blue and white fire that appears to depict the divine. Ironically, “I am that I am” here celebrates modern subjectivity since Kilmer speaks of himself to himself. But after those words are spoken, the fire becomes reddish and bluish as Kilmer’s voice selfidentifies: “I am the God of your ancestors .  .  .” Thereafter Kilmer’s voice promises Pharaoh’s defeat and Kilmer/Moses the staff of divine power. The young viewer would likely sense that the fire images are mysterious and that the staff is special. But the film needs to attach those two images (as well as the voice) more definitively to the divine. Later dialogue confuses even more. Pharaoh blames Moses’s God for doubling the workload of the slaves and Aaron asserts that God is uncaring; however, Miriam assures Moses that God will not abandon him so Moses should not abandon his people. At this point, young viewers witness a questioning of divine authority. The next time that the presence of God appears is when Kilmer’s voice whispers instructions to Kilmer/Moses to use the staff, which he does despite Aaron’s taunts. The questioning of the divine authority remains, however, leaving young viewers unsure of their loyalties. Iconography further fails to clarify divine authority in the mad-cap scene, “You’re Playing with the Big Boys Now.” The farcical sequence trivializes the biblical message of the divine sovereignty. Next, young viewers hear Moses’s voiceover (not a divine speech) of the Passover instructions as a white star spirals down and the Hebrews retreat. A vague, white flash enters a residence, a creepy hush is heard, and the flash departs. Only when they see Rameses holding his lifeless baby would young viewers understand what has happened—but not who has caused it. Downtrodden, Pharaoh releases the slaves, and the mood instantly changes with the song “Miracles”: “There can be miracles when you believe”—including the next miracle, the parting of the Red Sea. As a wall of fire appears from the sky, Kilmer’s voice instructs, “With this staff, you shall do my wonders.” The wall of fire, which is now yellow and red, departs as Rameses and his soldiers attack and are then consumed by the collapsing sea wall. James Russell claims that the use of CGI in the burning bush, Angel of Death, and Red Sea scenes creates “a different texture from the two-dimensional animation used in the rest of the film,” granting them an “intangible sense” of authenticity (2004: 249; compare Hall and Neale 2010: 255). “Miracles,” the Moses/divine voice, the vague white flash, and the color-changing fire fail, however, to credit deliverance clearly to the divine and can only confuse young viewers who need consistent markers to identify the transcendent. In fact, this film repeatedly confused my young granddaughter, Ellen, when I watched it with her. While she is always curious, this film sparked at least three times as many questions as any other film I have ever watched with her.



A Genre(s) Approach to The Prince of Egypt

303

The film’s song, voice, dialogue, and images ultimately award the credit to Moses. This is never more apparent than when the film ultimately establishes Moses as the narratee of “Deliver us!” The only hint of the divine in this scene, as one of my students pointed out to me, is a red and yellow light in the sky. Tzipporah overrides this vague suggestion, however, when she turns to Moses and says, “Look, look at your people, Moses. They are free.” Now, a different light appears above Moses and, as he turns, behind him. Again, the transcendent iconography is vague and inconsistent. Further, the praises of Miriam and Tzipporah to Moses credit only Moses as the deliverer. Once again, young viewers hear the lyrics from “Miracles”: “you can achieve” and “you believe.” The film closes with an endorsement of human resolve as Moses holds his staff and clings to tablets, with no explanation of what they are and who bestowed them. Thereafter, older viewers can read descriptions of Moses as God’s prophet and divinely ordained deliverer. Unfortunately, these unspoken words are lost on preliterate young viewers. For DreamWorks, faith “rests as much in human determination as in divine power” (Heard 2016: 276). To alter a clear distinction between the divine’s authority and Moses’s agency significantly distorts Exodus’s religious instruction—where it is the divine who chooses who, how, and when to protect humans, demanding obedience, loyalty, and gratitude. Instead, DreamWorks creates a “radical translation,” reshaping the original to an extreme degree (Cahir 2006: 17): the divine punishes while humans save—a clear misrepresentation of Exodus’s divine sovereignty. Many young viewers could see this as an authority-gets-the-blame while children-get-the credit worldview. For young viewers, so beholden to authority figures, this message is dangerous. Adults would need to explain Torah’s assertion that without divine intervention, the Hebrews would have not have triumphed over the Egyptians. As it enervates the legitimate power of authority, The Prince of Egypt sends the wrong lesson to its young viewers.

Bildungsroman As a Bildungsroman, what does The Prince of Egypt offer its young viewers? I have discussed this issue in a previous work, but have some additional comments. In that work, I allege that DreamWorks moves from an epic to a coming-of-age story, predicated on sibling rivalry (Rohrer-Walsh 2002).9 The shift creates a “new center of emotional gravity” (Johnson and Rietveld 2010: 92). Further, the film understates Moses’s affiliation with his true brother, Aaron (Watanabe 1998), while focusing on Rameses as Moses’s alter ego (Britt 2004: 44). Is their rivalry over Seti’s approval? Will Rameses “bring down the dynasty precisely by living up to his father’s expectations”?10 Further, rather than exploring this rivalry, the film shifts to Moses’s self-discovery in the underground vault as he pieces together his association with the oppressed slaves through images of drowning babies. Although the Bible indicates little about Moses’s early life, The Prince of Egypt, like a typical Bildungsroman, explores the protagonist’s childhood background. The movie quickly moves from the Hebrew slaves’ oppression to the discovery of the baby Moses floating down the river before jumping to his adolescence. Unlike the biblical Moses, DreamWorks’s Moses is a rambunctious

304

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

youth, racing chariots and destroying the slaves’ work. Why initially focus on the back-breaking work of the Hebrew slaves only to quickly trivialize it with impunity? Childhood innocence continues when Moses accidently kills the Egyptian overseer (rather than doing it deliberately as in Exodus). While his action should launch Moses into the separation/transitional stage of a Bildungsroman, the film chooses the more passive underground-vault viewing of the images of drowning babies. This identity discovery/crisis forces Moses to leave Egypt. As the film moves into what should be the marginal or transitional stage in a Bildungsroman, the film falters most seriously. Moses’s divine mentor guarantees his success without serious testing (compare Athena’s support of Telemachus in The Odyssey). How can Moses fail as the divine grants his power, guides his direction, and insures his triumph? Without the risk of failing at one’s tasks, one simply cannot realistically transition from childhood to adulthood. As the film ignores this significant requirement for a successful Bildungsroman and, like The Lion King (1994), handholds its young protagonist into adulthood, it propels him into the Bildungsroman’s aggregation/reincorporation stage without providing a clear guide for this maturation. Without risking, failing, struggling, testing, and being tested, Moses arrives miraculously at adulthood. In this way, DreamWorks suggests that if one is inexplicably divinely chosen, success and acclaim are guaranteed. Miracles happen when you believe indeed. Rather than having Moses align with the status quo (the mandate of a Bildungsroman), the film presents the perpetually adolescent “Moses Show.”

Epic As an epic, what does The Prince of Egypt offer its young audience? DreamWorks intended to produce a significant, profitable (cinematic) epic for family entertainment.11 To establish its seriousness, DreamWorks decided not to produce any action figures or market the film in fast-food chains (Russell 2004: 246). However, DreamWorks did coordinate with Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club to market tickets, books, a CD, and a lithograph. In fact, customers were welcomed by greeters with The Prince of Egypt buttons (“Wal-Mart” 1998: 19). As such, it is debatable how much revenue DreamWorks was willing to sacrifice for a public perception of integrity and artistry. Regardless, DreamWorks insisted that it launched The Prince of Egypt to establish its credibility as a serious film producer. In fact, in this effort, DreamWorks positions itself as the (free) emerging company with an artist-friendly atmosphere vis-à-vis its fierce competitor Disney, which becomes “the oppressive Egyptian regime” (Russell 2004: 234).12 And, what better way to triumph over the Disney mega-corporation than to produce an epic hero? In the chariot race—reprising the famous scene from the biblical epic, the 1959 BenHur—the film creates Moses as the epic “man of action” (Yacowar 1999), without the biblical stammer and dependence on Aaron. This Moses is a gentle, forgiving, strong, caring, faithful, and commanding presence that gets a monumental job done without moral quandary.



A Genre(s) Approach to The Prince of Egypt

305

Like every hero of a successful epic, he stands for what is best about his people— endurance, obedience, and faithfulness. Moreover, like every epic, the film proclaims that “back in the day, we were great,” portraying a proud time in the people’s history. As one five-year-old said after watching the parting of the Red Sea, “Oh yeah! I want to be on Moses’s team!” (Atkinson and Shifrin 2008: 35). And clearly, Moses’s team members are the people he is delivering to become a new people in the promised land. An epic’s pro-nationalism entails a conflict with another people. In this case, while the story begins with the Hebrews (YHWH) versus the Egyptians (Pharaoh), that nationalistic (and divine) conflict fades quickly into the personal sibling rivalry. Further, a true epic would not invite young viewers to sympathize with Rameses’s fate as “a cog in a malign, idolatrous machine” under his tyrannical father’s rule (Russell 2004: 246) because that fosters compassion for the Hebrews’ oppressors. DreamWorks struggled to avoid any vilification of Rameses and the Egyptians; yet, to create an epic, the story must demonstrate one people’s greatness against another’s weakness. DreamWorks sidestepped this epic tension. While The Prince of Egypt does proclaim that “back in the day, we were great,” it does not reject Rameses, his priests, and every other Egyptian as the enemies of the Hebrews (and their God). Teaching children to identity the Other and deal with “stranger danger” is crucial to their healthy development (Vander Stichele and Pyper 2012: 3). To navigate a world of alterity, the young must learn how to create their goodness and recognize the lack of goodness in others’ actions. So too young viewers must learn to navigate the rhetoric of patriotism and clearly distinguish between what makes a nation good or not. As DreamWorks skirts this epic tension between “us and them,” it fails as an epic to teach young viewers that nations should establish political boundaries.

Myth As a myth, what does The Prince of Egypt offer its young viewers? The answer to that question depends on how we view myth and how we distinguish it from epic. While both genres are concerned with groups, the epic celebrates the proud moment in a people/nation’s history. We might see an epic then as a particular kind of myth. The broader category of myth is also concerned with a community; it is, in some classic definitions, a community’s charter. I use the category of myth here to ask what cultural codes The Prince of Egypt articulates. Broadly, the film endorses US cultural codes involving family, individualism, race/ethnicity, and gender (see Graybill). The film also invites young viewers to consider that violence is necessary to reclaim the power and integrity of a threatened people. How successfully does the film do this? More importantly, is this myth appropriate or desirable for the film’s young viewers? One norm the film explores is a family code. At the onset, a tyrannical father and sibling rivalry threaten Moses’s Egyptian family; later, his biological brother’s antagonism threatens his Hebrew family. While both families pose complications, it is the family Moses creates with Tzipporah, his child, and Jethro that operates ideally. This family, plus his sister, afford Moses the familial support group that he needs to defeat Rameses and lead the Hebrews. In the end, the film endorses Moses’s “extended

306

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Hebrew” family (Russell 2004: 246). As such, The Prince of Egypt endorses the US cultural code of the (slightly extended) nuclear family—a code that differs from that in Torah, but which is still remarkably conservative—and heteronormative. While one can hardly gainsay the importance of a supportive family (or community) for children, less conservative viewers may wonder about the mythic value of the heteronormative. A second code that the film pursues is individualism. If Moses’s single-handed deliverance of the Hebrews departs from the Exodus message of divine sovereignty, this portrayal supports a modern US mythic view that everyone is special. While Moses begins as the divine scourge and minister, he ends alone, atop a mountain, looking down on the masses, tablets and staff in hand, victorious and powerful over his people. He is the man. Further, he has achieved all this without failure or taking any risks (as the divine has always guaranteed his success). While the final spotlight on Moses disqualifies the film as a successful biblical adaptation, epic, and Bildungsroman, it makes it a successful myth, endorsing spunky US individualism. Whether we wish young viewers to endorse that worldview, however, should be carefully considered. A third code involves race and ethnicity. DreamWorks struggled to avoid offending anyone on the grounds of ethnicity (and religion). According to Torah, Moses is “at odds” with his Hebrew heritage (Roncace and Gray 2016: 112). Like the biblical Moses, the film’s character is an ethnic anomaly. When Moses must deal with the oppressing Egyptians (his perceived race), his racial pride conflicts with his humanism. DreamWorks attempts to relieve this tension by avoiding Moses’s Jewishness (Yacowar 1999). While such homogenizing may have once supported US mainstreaming and may still support some conservative politics, such “whitewashing,” as it is now styled, is routinely deplored by film critics, the academy, and civil rights activists. Further, DreamWorks’s diligent attempts to play down the story’s Egyptian versus Hebrew character and to play up the sibling rivalry also fails to authenticate cultural diversity and recognize racial tensions. As “diversity is important and choice is vital to children’s identity formation within religious tradition” (Du Toit 2012: 47), DreamWorks shortchanges its young viewers. We may then question whether the film succeeds mythically at this point. A final cultural code involves gender empowerment. DreamWorks portrays Tzipporah as a symbol for freedom and Miriam as a symbol for faith (Britt 2004: 55). DreamWorks “increases several women’s power and prominence .  .  . and does so specifically in response to concerns feminist scholars raised during production” (Heard 2016: 16; see also Watanabe 1998). That the film does not avoid misogyny, however, is evident in the scene where leering men sexually objectify Tzipporah, even though the film also endorses Moses’s disgust with these men. Further, when Moses saves Tzipporah here, the film seems to let the male savior outweigh a woman’s agency. In fact, throughout the film, no woman—no matter how impressive—gets the job done without a man’s support. At the close of the film, Moses’s wife and sister stand beside him, then stand behind him, and then vanish from the picture. At best, the film endorses a modified view of female empowerment. Reflecting many gendered-glassceilings, the film perpetuates very limited female empowerment. As such, it may not be the best myth for contemporary young viewers.



A Genre(s) Approach to The Prince of Egypt

307

For the most part, The Prince of Egypt succeeds in portraying a conservative version of the US cultural codes of its era. The heterosexual family is the norm. Individualism saves the day. Race and ethnicity are skirted and homogenized as much as possible. And women’s agency diminishes quickly in a man’s world. The Prince of Egypt successfully operates as a myth to endorse these four conservative normative views. Less conservative viewers may doubt that such views need further perpetuation. Finally, myths are violent, but they carefully distinguish appropriate and inappropriate violence. Inappropriate violence destroys a group’s order while appropriate violence restores it. The film clearly condemns the slaves’ violent oppression despite their contributions to building an Egyptian empire. That leaves a great deal more violence to clarify as inappropriate or appropriate. Moses’s accidental killing of the overseer and the plagues—particularly the death of the firstborn—should be seen as appropriate because they initiate the new Hebrew order.13 However, the filmmakers soften the impact of violence on young viewers through comic antagonists, humor, and slapstick. Instead of endorsing the Othering and destroying of the Egyptians as evils necessary to free the Hebrews, DreamWorks focuses on Moses’s anguish at this turn of events. Moses is saddened to see Rameses hold his dead son, appalled to see the Egyptians crash into the enfolding Red Sea, and distraught over the severed relationship with a man he once considered to be his brother. Moses’s sympathy reflects a typical US discomfort with sanctioning violence— even when necessary for a group’s order.14 While the violence is deemed necessary to save the group, it quickly becomes regrettable or at least is overshadowed by a person’s loss—rather than a group’s gain. In turn, after the United States employs violence, it quickly retreats into a peaceful and personal reaction, promising to rebuild and reconnect with those left behind its slaughter. Wavering on an endorsement of the appropriate use of violence, The Prince of Egypt fails to provide the necessary guidance to its young viewers that violence to restore order should be considered dangerous yet appropriate.

Conclusion Myth is a better generic fit for The Prince of Egypt than “faithful” biblical adaptation, successful Bildungsroman, or nationalistic epic. For the most part, DreamWorks supports the modern, conservative US values of the nuclear family, racial/ethnic homogenizing, rampant individualism, and limited female agency. Having won many awards and grossed high profits, this animated film creates a punctum, “the sting one may experience from the very idea that they could cry or shriek for a never-has-been character” (Jenkins 2013: 587), as young viewers long to be on Moses’s team. But as an archetypal patriarch, a racially ambiguous leader, and a soft-hearted conqueror, is Moses the ideal model for a contemporary young audience? More than that, do we want a hero who does not deal effectively with the question of acceptable/unacceptable violence? While The Prince of Egypt seems a relatively successful myth, does it advance the mythic perspectives we wish to foster for children? Do we wish to perpetuate these

308

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

US mythic worldviews? Those are the essential questions to ponder in assessing the value of The Prince of Egypt for children.

Notes 1 Ironically, the Academy Awards heavily favor adaptations (Quinn 2007: 22). 2 See Jenkins for animation’s ability to produce powerful emotional experiences for young viewers (2013: 578). Heard argues that animation is particularly able to make the unbelievable believable (2016: 268). 3 And, of course, the medium of (animated) film differs from that of text, the venue of the commercial theater differs from that of the worship community or the academic’s study, and so forth. 4 Wilson’s lawyer investigated whether the Wilson estate was owed compensation for the film’s use of the novel (Harrison 1999). 5 DreamWorks even hired a “civil rights attorney with a background in interfaith relations to organize a massive outreach effort” (Watanabe 1998). 6 These changes are listed in the trivia section of the film available through Amazon streaming. For the interested, the website Purity and Precision (n.d.) lists thirty-one deviations from the biblical text. 7 The music addresses Elohim, a rather generic term for God. Perhaps the people do not yet know YHWH, as that revelation is the chief concern of the book of Exodus. 8 For a distinction between diegetic and extradiegetic, see Cartmell and Whelehan (2007: 214). 9 For a bibliography on and a discussion of the three stages of a Bildungsroman (separation, transition, and reincorporation), see Rohrer-Walsh (2002). 10 Britt sees Rameses as a “love-deprived bully” who never comes of age (2004: 55). 11 For a treatment of epic films as articulating the values of a people or nation (the United States specifically), see Wood (1989). 12 The similarity to DeMille’s use of his 1956 film to fight the Cold War is obvious. 13 Turner et al. claim the “black pall of death”—of the tenth plague—is likely “to produce recurring nightmares” (1989: 233). My daughter was reluctant to let her daughter (my granddaughter) watch this film because she was afraid it would cause her nightmares. 14 Laurel Koepf speaks against censoring conflicts: “Rather, the imperfect protagonists in biblical narratives live difficult lives, and the Bible’s more instructive genres take complex situational distinctions into account. Both defy the search for happy endings, easy answers, and straightforward values that pervades much of western religious and secular culture. Both the Bible and children are othered by way of idealization in modern Western culture. Each is constructed as innocent, kept at a distance by removing its full complexity” (2012: 17). She attributes this censoring to the needs of the adults to “protect their own alleged omnipotence” (2012: 15).

Works cited Atkinson, Michael, and Laurel Shifrin (2008), Flickipedia: Perfect Films for Every Occasion, Holiday, Mood, Ordeal, and Whim, Chicago: Independent Publishers Group.



A Genre(s) Approach to The Prince of Egypt

309

Beck, Jerry (2005), Animated Movie Guide: The Ultimate Illustrated Reference to Cartoon, Stop-Motion and Computer-Generated Feature Films, Chicago: Chicago Review. Brenner, Athalya (2007), “Recreating the Biblical Creation for Western Children: Provisional Reflections on Some Case Studies,” in Alasdair G. Hunter and Caroline Vander Stichele (eds.), Creation and Creativity, 11–34, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Britt, Brian (2004), Rewriting Moses: The Narrative Eclipse of the Text, London: T&T Clark. Buskin, Richard (1999), “Postproduction the Prince of Egypt,” Studio Sound, February 1. Available online: http://www.americanradiohistory.com/hd2/IDX-Audio/ Archive-Studio-Sound-IDX/IDX/90s/Studio-Sound-1999-02-OCR-Page-0070. pdf#search=%22prince of egypt%22 (accessed November 19, 2016). Cahir, Linda Costanzo (2006), Literature into Film: Theory and Practical Approaches, Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Cartmell, Deborah, and Imelda Whelehan (2007), The Cambridge Companion to Literature on Screen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dowell, Pat (1998), [Radio Broadcast] “The Making of Prince of Egypt,” Morning Edition, NPR, December 18. Available online: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story. php?storyId=1023829 (accessed November 19, 2016). Du Toit, Jacqueline S. (2012), “All God’s Children: Authority Figures, Places, or Learning, and Society as the Other in Creationist Children’s Bibles,” in Carolyn Vander Stichele and Hugh Pyper (eds.), Text, Image, and Otherness in Children’s Bibles: What Is in the Picture?, 31–50, Semeia Studies 56, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Genette, Gérard (1997), Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, trans. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Hall, Sheldon, and Stephen Neale (2010), Epics, Spectacles, And Blockbusters: A Hollywood History, Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Harrison, Judy (1999), “Prince of Egypt Author Still Working for Social Justice,” World Wide Faith News, 24 February. Available online: http://archive.wfn.org/1999/02/ msg00236.html (accessed November 19, 2016). Heard, Christopher (2016), “Drawing (on) the Text: Biblical Reception in Animated Films,” in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (ed.), The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of the Bible and Its Reception, Vol. 1, 267–83, Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception 2; Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Jenkins, Eric S. (2013), “Another Punctum: Animation, Affect, and Ideology,” Critical Inquiry, 39 (3): 575–91. Johnson, Barbara, and Barbara Rietveld (2010), Moses and Multiculturalism, Berkeley: University of California Press. Koepf, Laurel (2012), “Inside Out: The Othered Child in the Bible for Children,” in Carolyn Vander Stichele and Hugh Pyper (eds.), Text, Image, and Otherness in Children's Bibles: What Is in the Picture?, 11–30, Semeia Studies 56, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Leitch, Thomas M. (2007), Film Adaptation And Its Discontents: From Gone With The Wind To The Passion Of The Christ, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Plato (1987), The Republic, trans. Desmond Lee, London: Penguin. Purity and Precision (n.d.), “Does the Movie Line Up With the Bible?” Available online: http://www.purityandprecision.com/2010/03/movie-review-prince-of-egypt.html (accessed November 19, 2016). Quinn, Maureen (2007), The Adaptation of a Literary Text to Film: Problems and Cases in “Adaptation Criticism,” Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen.

310

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Rohrer-Walsh, Jennifer (2002), “Coming-of-Age in The Prince of Egypt,” in George Aichele and Richard Walsh (eds.), Screening Scripture: Intertextual Connections Between Scripture and Film, 77–99, Harrisburg: Trinity Press, International. Roncace, Mark, and Patrick Gray, eds. (2016), Teaching The Bible: Practical Strategies For Classroom Instruction, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Russell, James (2004), “Foundation Myths: DreamWorks SKG, The Prince of Egypt (1998) and the Historical Epic Film, New Review of Film and Television Studies, 2 (2): 233–55. Sanders, Julie (2006), Adaptation and Appropriation, New York and London: Routledge. Turner, Helen Lee, Amy E. Jones, and Doris A. Blazer (1989), “The Hanna-Barbera Cartoons: Compounding Bible Ignorance?” The Christian Century, 106, 1 March: 231–34. Vander Stichele, Caroline, and Hugh S. Pyper (2012), “Introduction,” in Caroline Vander Stichele and Hugh S. Pyper (eds.), Text, Image, and Otherness in Children’s Bibles: What Is in the Picture?, 1–7, Semeia Studies 56, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. “Wal-Mart Blesses Prince of Egypt” (1998), Twice, November 9: 19. Watanabe, Teresa (1998), “An Ecumenical ‘Prince of Egypt,’” LA Times, December 12. Available online: http://articles.latimes.com/1998/dec/12/local/me-53174 (accessed November 19, 2016). Wilson, Dorothy Clarke (1949), Prince of Egypt, Philadelphia: Westminster. Wood, Michael (1989), America in the Movies, 2nd ed., New York: Columbia University Press. Yacowar, Maurice (1999), “Prints of Denial: Life is Beautiful and Prince of Egypt,” Queen’s Quarterly, 106 (1): 76–91. Available online: http://yacowar.blogspot.com/2014/12/lifeis-beautiful-prince-of-egypt-1999.html (accessed May 17, 2017).

25

“What Child Is This?”: Reflections on the Child Deity and Generic Lineage of Exodus: Gods and Kings

Richard Walsh

“Whitewashing” may be the ultimate legacy of Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014). If this critique of this film (and others) moves Hollywood toward greater diversity, then the film’s ironic result might be a new Exodus from yet another seemingly omnipotent empire (now Hollywood).1 The irony would be delicious because Hollywood has repeatedly reprised this story—the creation of a free community out of an oppressive empire—while simultaneously supporting the (imperial) status quo (see Wood 1989; Deleuze 1997). In this chapter, I reflect more on that Hollywood status quo than on possible liberation as I ask what new thing Scott’s film might be. What child is this film?2 The “child” trope seems appropriate because, apart from the “whitewashing,” one of the film’s striking features is its depiction of the divine—in the figure of the child Malak. After reflecting on this theological depiction, I will move to the related question of “what child” the film might be in terms of its generic lineage, giving particular attention to the biblical epic and some attention to Scott’s oeuvre.

What child is this? Child deities and messengers Malak appears in four major scenes in Exodus: Gods and Kings: 1) to call Moses to liberate the Hebrews (Exod. 3) and briefly later in an abrupt editing cut where he temporarily takes the place of Moses’s son; 2) to announce the beginning of the plagues (Exod. 3:20-22; 4:21-23; 6:1, 6; 7:3-5; 7:14-11:10) and briefly later to look on unseen as Moses laments the plagues’ horror; 3) to announce the death of the Egyptian first born (Exod. 11:4-8; 12:12-13, 29-32); and 4) to give Moses the choice of the law (Exod. 34:27-28?), and briefly later walking among the pilgrims as an aged Moses rides in a wagon with Malak’s law.

312

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Malak is a striking divine depiction, first and foremost, because biblical films rarely portray the deity in anthropomorphic form. Exceptions occur, but comedy portrays God with an onscreen actor more often than biblical films do.3 This appraisal does not overlook Jesus films, which almost invariably depict Jesus as the incarnate Son of God, because it is precisely their concentration on the Son—like that of the gospels—that leaves the Father unrepresented by onscreen actors.4 Typically, biblical film presents God as a disembodied voice, as dramatic light (or storm), as special effects, through camera movements and angles, through editing, through inexplicable events, through talismans, through awed faces (and dramatically changed lives), and, of course, through spectacle itself (see Walsh 2003: 187–89). But, then, the biblical tradition is also reluctant to stage God anthropomorphically (see Terrien 1978; Patrick 1981). Meteorological theophanies are more common than anthropomorphic; divine voice is more common than divine sightings;5 and divine spokespersons are more common than divine voice (Patrick 1981; Miles 1995). God appears anthropomorphically primarily in Genesis: early on in almost naively depicted direct appearances (Gen. 2–4) and then more ambiguously in stories, which describe the same visitor as God and as a man (e.g., Gen. 18; 32:24-32).6 In Exodus, God is known in storm (19–20), special effects (e.g., burning bushes, signs and wonders, and Moses’s glorified face), but primarily in speech—and that primarily to Moses (see, particularly, 20:18-21; 33:11).7 While Exodus 33:11 asserts that God spoke with Moses face-to-face, Exod. 33:20-23 undercuts that notion. In fact, the latter passage has become a classic statement of God’s hiddenness or of the human inability to see (represent?) God. Second, Malak then also makes a striking depiction of God because he is such a dramatic departure from the divine depiction in Exodus. The film’s Malak is a departure, that is, if he is indeed God. Given that the Hebrew word “malak” means angel or messenger, the film’s Malak might be simply a divine messenger, rather than a direct depiction of the divine. In fact, in Malak’s third appearance when he informs Moses of the upcoming death of the Egyptian first born and Moses argues with him, a frustrated Moses says, “I’m tired of talking with a messenger.” Ignoring the slight, Malak simply goes on with his murderous plans to demythologize Pharaoh. The film, however, never actually calls this child Malak. The name comes from the credits. In the film, when Moses asks for his name, Malak replies divinely, “I am” (Exod. 3:14). Why, then, does the film credit its divine character as “Malak”?8 Exodus 3:2 does say that “the angel [malak] of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.”9 Thereafter, the angel vanishes as God speaks to Moses out of the bush. In the film, Malak appears and speaks, which, of course, makes this film’s depiction of the divine quite different from the speaking bush of other well-known Exodus movies. It is, however, a passage other than Exodus 3 that is more evocative of the film’s Malak and its construction of the divine: “Behold, I send an angel (malak) before you, to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place which I have prepared. Give heed to him and hearken to his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression; for my name is in him” (23:20-21, emphasis added). Here, as in the film, is a Malak who bespeaks the divine name (I am). Further, this



“What Child Is This?”

313

passage’s context is incredibly militant; this Exodus malak “will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.” He will go before the people when God “blot[s]” out these enemies (23:22-23). Malak then is a highly appropriate name for the incredibly militant deity of this most militant of all Exodus films. Exodus: Gods and Kings adds battles to the story whenever possible and its Malak seeks a general in his first appearance, arrives again to take over Moses’s ineffective war of attrition with spectacular plagues, and appears again to announce the murderous coup de grȃce. This Malak is remarkably like Exodus’s own militant angel of the Lord who goes ahead of the “army” of Israel, dispensing with all her enemies (14:19 NRSV; 23:20-21, 23; 33:2). Third, Malak makes a striking divine depiction because he is a child. Eleven-yearold British actor, Isaac Andrews, plays Malak.10 While Romantics, Gnostics, and others might imagine the divine as a child, biblical texts do not (often) do so. Despite their Christmas story, which is replete with divine imagery for the baby/child Jesus (Mt. 1:23; 2:11; Lk. 1:32, 35), some Christian commentators lambasted Scott’s film for this depiction of God—even before the film’s release (see Cieply and Barnes 2014; Faraci 2014; contrast Chattaway 2014; Larsen 2014). The title of the New York Times article, however, recalled the apropos Isa. 11:6, “and a little child shall lead them” (Ceiply and Barnes 2014). Of course, the Isaiah reference, like others in that book (9:6-7; 7:14?), which the gospels repurpose, refers not to God specifically but to his ideal king. And, of course, film has often imagined angels as children (e.g., Seduto alla sua destra [Black Jesus 1968], Il vangelo secondo Matteo [The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 1964], The Last Temptation of Christ [1988], and Jezile [Son of Man 2006]). Regardless, to depict God as a child is still striking.

What child is this? What a brat we have in Malak The choice of a child to portray God in this story, like the child angels in Jezile in particular, calls attention to the other children in Exodus, to Pharaoh’s decrees to kill Hebrew boys (Exod. 1:16, 22) and to God’s murderous tenth plague (Exod. 11:110; 12:29-30). One might easily read the first third of Exodus as a story about whose children die. Memorably, when the film’s Ramses asks Moses what kind of God kills children, Moses can only murmur that no Hebrew children died. Exodus itself does not frame the story in terms of slaughtered innocents. At least, it makes no reference to Pharaoh’s murderous decrees when Moses (not God) announces the death of the Egyptian first born (11:4-8; God simply speaks of a plague in 11:1-3). Subsequent divine remarks (12–13) deal with rituals based on this event. In short, Exodus does not (ethically) justify the tenth plague. The concern is simply about God’s power (versus Pharaoh’s) and property/clients (not Pharaoh’s). In this regard, Exodus 13, the decree that the Israelite firstborn belong to God, is a chilling end to the plagues and the property duel. The Prince of Egypt (1998), which rivals The Ten Commandments (1956) as the cinematic influence on Exodus: Gods and Kings, is strikingly different. There, Moses’s temple dream about drowned babies and his squabble with his Pharaoh “father” over these murders begins the sequence that leads to his departure (not exile) from Egypt.11

314

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Further, Moses does not announce the tenth plague until Rameses threatens to finish his father’s work. Only then does Moses, who stands opposed to Rameses in the temple of his dream and in front of a depiction of drowned babies, announce the “great plague,” without specifying its exact details (compare Exod. 11:1-3). In contrast, Exodus: Gods and Kings downplays the early murderous decrees. Its story starts with an adult Moses. The murdered children of Moses’s own childhood appear only in a story told by Nun (that Moses does not believe) and in an allusion by Ramses. There are, however, other deaths. The villainous Viceroy Hegep often feels it necessary to “thin” the herd. And, when the Hebrews hide Moses, Ramses begins hanging a Hebrew family a day. But, for the film, slavery itself—the Egyptian sense that the Hebrews are simply not people—sufficiently justifies Moses’s war of terror and the plagues.12 Before the last plague, Ramses soliloquizes (to an absent Moses) that he will bring his own plague as a reprisal for Moses’s. He will drown infants as Moses should have been drowned. More importantly, however, Ramses declares his own divinity and sketches a “best killer” test—between himself, Moses, and Moses’s god. Malak appears immediately to Moses, answering power with power. He wants the Pharaohs, who “imagine they’re living gods,” on their knees. It is Moses who objects ethically. Moses alone hears the details of the tenth plague. All the audience hears is Moses’s revulsion. He “wants no part of this,” but he is part of it, and the sequence ends his struggle with/against Malak. After the children’s deaths, it is Ramses, holding his dead son, who objects theologically: what kind of fanatics worship a killer of children? In reply, Moses weakly says that no Hebrew children died. Moses has identified with the Hebrews—and with Malak. While the result is quite close to Exodus’s imagination of frightening divine power (see Larsen 2014), the depiction of this power as a frustrated, petulant child undermines its authority. And, ironically, this depiction may raise far more ethical questions than The Prince of Egypt or even Exodus does. Put simply, Malak is a brat—with terrifying power. Like a terrifying two-year old, he can brook no impediment to his desires. The only similar depiction in Exodus films of which I am aware occurs in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 The Ten Commandments. There, it is Pharaoh’s son who is a brat. At Pharaoh’s side when Moses announces the tenth plague, he strikes Moses and implores his father to kill him. Soon, however, servants carry this child, now dead, to a grieving Pharaoh. While undeveloped, this brat is yet another, embryonic attempt to justify the tenth plague because the brat seemingly gets his “comeuppance.” Malak is too powerful for such a fate—particularly after Moses capitulates to him.

What child is this? Modern fears of the uncanny Before he capitulates, Moses is a rationalist skeptic, a depiction differing dramatically from previous cinematic Moseses.13 The movie opens with the Egyptians contemplating battle against the Hittites at Kadesh. A prophetess divines bird entrails, while Moses laughs. She reveals that one leader will save another in the upcoming battle and then become a great leader. Scoffing, Moses says the entrails then should also say that the leader should abandon reason and be guided by oracles. Later, Moses tries to disabuse



“What Child Is This?”

315

Nun and other Hebrew elders of their unreasonable belief in their divine election. For Moses, such faith leads to fanaticism and that to rebellion and sedition. Moses also refuses to believe Nun’s claim about Moses’s Hebrew heritage. Finally, Moses is gently skeptical of Zipporah’s faith (and of her religion’s rules about the taboo mountain) and wants Gershom to trust himself, not the gods. All this comes undone on the mountain. In an eerie setting, reminiscent of a Campbell-esque hero’s descent into the psychic abyss, a muddy rockslide badly injures and buries Moses, except for his face. Malak wakes him and the buried Moses sees the burning bush and then the boy. Seemingly unconcerned with Moses’s plight, Malak playfully builds and then destroys, like a willful child, a small stone pyramid. When Moses wants to know who Malak is, Malak childishly rejoins with a question about Moses’s identity. Malak disappears abruptly after offering Moses the divine name. While the scene begins Moses’s transformation from shepherd (back) to general, it also is a journey “inward” to self-awareness. Unlike the biblical God, Malak even tells Moses that he will not find peace until he begins his mission. Back, at home, with Zipporah, the sense that all this might be simply a feverish Moses’s delusions intensify. She thinks what he saw was a consequence of being hit on the head.14 Most significantly, she knows that God is not a boy. (The skeptic Moses is less certain about God’s appearance.)15 But, Moses knows he sounds delusional and assumes his psychotic/divine mission, against Zipporah’s wishes, only after his reality breaks and he sees Gershom as Malak playing with his pyramid rocks. That no other character ever sees Malak further contributes to the sense that Moses is deluded. That the audience sees Joshua watch Moses talk angrily to no one is particularly unsettling. Then, after the hail plague, the audience also sees Moses talking to no one. But, Moses acknowledges that no one is there, and, for the only time in the film, the audience sees Malak when Moses does not. If Moses is delusional, the audience is too.16 Nonetheless, a lingering sense of Moses’s troubled mental state remains. Christian Bale remarked in interviews that Moses was likely schizophrenic and one of the most barbaric individuals about whom he had ever read (Shoard 2014).17 This sense of the character is evident in the actor’s performance. That one sees Moses quarrel with himself also intensifies this possibility. When Moses capitulates to the tenth plague, however, the struggle is over. The rational skeptic vanishes; only the believer/fanatic remains. Thereafter, Moses has a haunted, beaten look. His prayers go unanswered.18 Nonetheless, he acts as if he knows what God wants—despite God’s silence: for example, in choosing the mountain path over the easy path to the sea; and in leading the people into a waist-deep sea. Finally, the erstwhile skeptic takes comfort in his wife’s faith. Given God’s depiction as a child, the child seems to triumph over the man, the id over the superego, supernatural religion and/or fanaticism over reason. In Malak’s fourth appearance, the man accepts the law of the child (not the father) in a cave, of course. Moses’s characterization is reminiscent of Sigmund Freud’s uncanny (unheimlich), which Freud argues is the feeling one has in the face of something that should be hidden (or overcome) but has come to light (1919: 4). It is repressed infantile complexes or primitive animistic thinking. The latter, which includes omnipotence of thoughts, instantaneous wish-fulfillments, secret power to harm, and the return

316

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

of the dead, reads like a catalogue of elements in biblical literature or supernatural religion (1919: 17). Although Freud does not mention religion, he does define the uncanny most concisely as supposedly surmounted superstition (1919: 18). Certainly, the uncanny might well define the feeling a post-Enlightenment modern (like Scott) has when reading the Exodus story or in imagining the character of a true believer like Moses. It may also describe the feeling of some viewers of Scott’s film. The child Malak wonderfully symbolizes what post-Enlightenment figures wrongly thought was left behind.

What child is this? The film as biblical epic and Scott film Given the West’s anxiety about religiously motivated terror since, at least, 9/11, the film seems a comment on such anxieties and on violent religions. Of course, the biblical epic has always provided a forum for overt comments on the cultures of the films (see Babington and Evans 1993; Reinhartz 2013). Famously, DeMille presented The Ten Commandments (1956) as an allegory of the US Cold War politics of his day, deliberately depicting the Exodus as a similar, earlier version of the creation of a free community versus an evil, tyrannical empire. Given film’s rampant Orientalism and its tendency to reprise earlier films, elements of DeMille’s religion of freedom remain unsurprisingly in Exodus: Gods and Kings. In fact, this film’s depiction of political freedom resembles that of DeMille far more than the individualistic freedom valued in The Prince of Egypt. Although Scott repeats the value-laden political contrast between Hebrews and Egyptians, the film does not create value-laden religious dichotomies—at least, not dichotomies that distinguish between the properly religious Hebrews (the West) and the bad religious Egyptians (the past, the East, Islam). The film, that is, does not play along with any contemporary notions of a “clash of civilizations” on the point of supernatural or prophetic religion. Instead, that uncanny is in everyone’s mind/ culture.19 Accordingly, like many recent biblical epics, Exodus: Gods and Kings has more than a touch of horror.20 The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) renders Jesus’s relationship with God as an invasive possession. The Passion of the Christ (2004) turns Gethsemane into a horror set, adds a boundary-transgressing, monstrous Satan wherever possible, presents Jesus’s scourging and passion as if they belonged in a slasher film, and depicts Judas’s fate as a damning possession. Noah (2014) imagines the flood’s full genocidal character and thus imagines God and his prophet as relentless serial killers. Exodus: Gods and Kings doubles down on similarly murderous characters with a petulant child deity and his capitulating prophet. More clearly than in Noah, supernatural/prophetic religion (fanaticism) is itself the horror. Further, as in horror, the audience watches the lone skeptic (Moses) “convert” to the terrifying reality of the supernatural (monster). Exodus: Gods and Kings also has more traditional epic features: large budget, epic scale, prerelease controversy, historical realism and the aura of history, and, of course, spectacle.21 Spectacular battles are everywhere. Like King of Kings (1961), this film adds them to its (already militant) story wherever possible. The film effectively begins and ends with a battle involving Moses and Ramses. Numerous state and guerrilla acts of



“What Child Is This?”

317

terror stand inside this frame. The sequence before the sea is a dramatic, chase scene. In a genre of excess, this film strives for more than any cinematic Exodus precursor. Beside the battles, the CGI plagues and the tsunami-like sea-crossing are the biggest spectacles. Lest the audience miss this point, in his second appearance, Malak tells Moses simply to watch, like the audience, the film (or its spectacular plagues). After the hail plague, Moses admits he was “impressed” (awed?) at first. Now, however, he questions the plague’s terrible consequences. Malak—and Scott—are undeterred and the plagues continue. In Malak’s third appearance, Moses objects again, but Malak insists that they need something worse (i.e., more dramatic and spectacular) to bring Ramses to heel. When Moses tries to walk away, Malak stops him abruptly by turning night into brilliant day. Spectacle is all. Awe—not rational or ethical reflection—is the only possible response. Although Malak does not appear again until Moses arrives at the mountain, the shock and awe continue. The cinematic depiction of the last plague, the chase, and the tsunami sea are all. The film’s spectacle thus effectively replaces Malak—the god created by the film. Exodus: Gods and Kings belongs wholly to Scott’s oeuvre, which contains more than one historical epic. Of these, he is most famous for Gladiator (2000), and that film resembles Exodus: Gods and Kings closely. Both films have an ancient, “biblical” setting and epic battles. In both, an opening battle elevates one “son” and lowers another. In both battles, extradiegetic martial music gradually pushes realistic battle sounds to the background. In both films, it is the adopted son who is most capable of rule. In both films, that adopted son is almost killed, becomes an exile, and undergoes various trials before returning “home.” Finally, that exile liberates his people. Both films, thus, share a similar theme about tyranny’s threats to the people, the people’s need for a (heroic) leader and for freedom, and the violence necessary to gain/defend this freedom.22 Of course, there are differences. Unlike Moses, Maximus, Gladiator’s hero, loses his wife and son to treachery, descends into slavery and the gladiator arena, and dies (triumphantly) for the cause in the finale. Further, Gladiator is less overtly religious or, more accurately, less biblical. It is more Spartacus (1960) than Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954). Ironically, however, it treats religion less negatively than Exodus: Gods and Kings does. Maximus, like the Roman hero Aeneas, is ideally pious. Rome, his family, his duty, and loyalty are everything. Perhaps such religion needs no critique because it comes across as heroic stoicism or even as (modern) patriotism (compare the portrayal of Balian in Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven [2005]). Finally, it is notable that, despite its bloody arena and the hero’s betrayal and death, Gladiator has a far lighter palette than Exodus: Gods and Kings. In fact, the overall palette of the latter (except for the gold of the Egyptian royalty) is more reminiscent of the dark palettes of Scott’s Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982). Perhaps the palette choice indicates that Exodus: Gods and Kings shares the horror (or dystopic) aura of these two films. While creatures dare question their maker in Blade Runner (as Moses questions Malak here), Alien may be more similar to Exodus: Gods and Kings. In Alien, a monstrous alien race replaces supernatural religion as threat. Horribly, that alien race uses humans to gestate its young, and Alien’s most infamous scene involves one of those children bursting from a human torso. While Exodus: Gods and Kings’s child deity never emerges in this fashion, he is symbolic of the desires, fueled by supernatural/

318

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

prophetic (fanatic?) religion, which always threaten to burst free from rational control. If so, one might dare to say that Exodus: God and Kings is, in Scott’s oeuvre, the love child of Alien and Gladiator.23

Summation What child is this? The film is a biblical epic tinged with horror, the primary component in which is supernatural religion and/or religious fanaticism (religious violence). However uncanny it may be, such horror is all too realistic in the contemporary world. In this horror, the film is also a remarkably nonreligious biblical epic.24 Its “supernatural” does not signify any traditional deity/religion as much as it does sheer cinematic spectacle. It is film (spectacle) that is holy. The child Malak represents post-Enlightenment anxieties about true believers and their gods. The film’s Malak is a petulant child, unable to brook any (imagined) insult or hindrance to his desires. The visualization of a child-god obviously differs from the divine voice that dominates Exodus. Ironically or not, the film’s characterization of Malak and Moses raises more ethical questions about religious violence (and religious imperialism) than Exodus does. In fact, for the biblically interested, the film may reveal that Exodus is more preoccupied, as Malak is, with divine prerogatives, jealousy, and property than with (modern) ethics.

Notes 1 For DreamWorks’s use of The Prince of Egypt as a foundation myth for a new, free artistic community versus the evil Disney empire, see Rohrer-Walsh; Russell (2004). 2 “What Child is This?” is the title of William Chatterton Dix’s 1871 Christmas carol. It juxtaposes the Christ child’s homely circumstances with his divine identity and deadly destiny. 3 For a survey of cinematic depictions of God, see Burnette-Bletsch (2016: 299–326). She lists La vie de Moïse (1905), The Bible (1966), The Bible (2013), and La Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ (1902–05, 1907) as biblical films in which onscreen actors depict God. Her list of comedies depicting God include, among others, The Green Pastures (1936), Oh, God! (1977), Bruce Almighty (2003), Evan Almighty (2007), and Dogma (1999). I would add the recent Le tout nouveau testament (The Brand New Testament 2015). 4 For Christians, Jesus clearly visualizes God (and the same actor portrays God and Jesus in The Bible [2013; see Burnette-Bletsch 2016: 301–02]), but the gospels are not as definitive. In them (particularly Mark), Jesus’s identity is disputed. John is most definite about Jesus’s divine identity but that gospel flits back and forth between equality and subordination. 5 While the biblical text often says that God speaks, it seldom specifies exactly how this happens—as a heavenly voice, as a disembodied voice, as an internal voice, as a feeling/ impression or otherwise. 6 Of course, anthropomorphic references (like those to the hand of God) occur throughout biblical narrative, but these do not compare to Genesis’s personal appearances.



“What Child Is This?”

319

7 Extending the divine speech, God also appears in books (Exod. 24:7), tablets of stone (31:18; 32:15-16; 34:1, 27), and other ritual paraphernalia. 8 In one interview (Merritt 2014), Scott claimed that Malak was a messenger, not God. As if deliberately reinstating biblical ambiguity, Christian Bale immediately responded as if Malak were a divine depiction. 9 Unless indicated, biblical quotations are from the RSV. Film citations are the author’s transcription from the film. 10 The choice of a British actor (Bale often has a noticeable British accent) to play Moses contrasts with the classic Hollywood biblical epics’ choices, which typically cast actors with American accents for the heroes and those with British accents for villains. See Babington and Evans (1993). 11 The slaughter of children does not motivate Moses’s mission. It does motivate Jesus’s mission in Jezile (2006). See Walsh (2013). 12 This point would be more powerful and relevant if it were not for the whitewashing critique of the film. 13 This characterization coheres with the “rationalistic” plagues (and tsunami-like “parting” of the sea). The early plague montage follows a “natural” chain of cause and effects, which an Egyptian priest helpfully exegetes. For surveys of cinematic Moseses, see Wright (1996), Britt (2004: Chapter 2), and Koosed (2016). Tollerton 2016 came to my notice only after I had completed this chapter and unfortunately too late to be considered. 14 That The Prince of Egypt (1998) uses Val Kilmer to voice both Moses and God creates a similar “god within” or delusional possibility. See Rohrer-Walsh. 15 Moses’s comment sounds quite like Christian Bale in an interview in which he argumentatively challenged the interviewer to devise his own divine portrayal (Merritt 2014). 16 Among biblical films, Moses’s portrayal is most like that of the Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). There, too, the audience gradually shares what first appears to be the character’s delusional visions. See Walsh (2010: 110–12). 17 This appraisal comes from an actor who has played many mentally troubled characters: for example, in American Psycho (2000), The Machinist (2004), and The Dark Knight (2008). 18 Malak does not deign to answer Moses’s three prayers in the film. 19 Scott makes a similar attempt to avoid the bad other (Muslim) versus good Christian dichotomy in his (nonetheless Orientalist) Kingdom of Heaven (2005). 20 When precisely horror became a significant influence on biblical film is an interesting question. Did Scorsese lead the way? Even The Prince of Egypt has tinges of horror (in the plagues). On horror and biblical film, see McGeough; Seesengood. 21 The trope in which love conquers duty or revenge, so common in Christian biblical epics, does not appear here. Jealous divine revenge against the usurper Pharaoh dominates. 22 Hardly unique to Scott’s two films, some see this theme the basic story of US epics (see Deleuze 1997; Wood 1989). 23 Scott’s Prometheus (2012) provides a back story for these aliens and also imagines the superior aliens who engineered the human race and almost destroyed it. The film ends with the warning to avoid these “divine” engineers at all costs. This does not express anxieties about supernatural religion. These aliens replace God as a threat. The film does not even mock its protagonist’s simple Christianity (but see Heard). The film does suggest fears, however, about humanity’s cosmic fragility—before beings or simply a cosmos that transcends it.

320

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

24 Notably, the film was marketed as action-adventure, not a biblical epic. Despite an equally intense critique of religious violence and an additional critique of institutional and fundamentalist religion, Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (2005) may come closer to expressing what Scott understands as “acceptable” religion. Certainly, the film sketches a religious faith at home in modernity in the hero’s (Balian) devotion to duty, compassion, and freedom of conscience. Balian is more Maximus than Moses, particularly as he eschews religious violence (while fighting to the end). Although not a Scott film, compare also Agora (2009).

Works cited Babington, Bruce, and Peter William Evans (1993), Biblical Epics: Sacred Narrative in the Hollywood Cinema, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Britt, Brian (2004), Rewriting Moses: The Narrative Eclipse of the Text, London: T&T Clark. Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda (2016), “God at the Movies,” in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (ed.), The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of the Bible and Its Reception in Film, Vol. 1, 299–326, Handbooks of the Bible and its Reception 2, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Cieply, Michael, and Brooks Barnes (2014), “And a Little Child Shall Lead Them: ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’ Portrays the Deity as a Boy,” New York Times, November 28. Available online: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/29/movies/exodus-gods-and-kingsportrays-the-deity-as-a-boy.html?_r=1 (accessed February 3, 2017). Chattaway, Peter (2014), “Meet the 11-year-old Boy Who Speaks for God When Moses Sees the Burning Bush in Exodus: Gods and Kings,” Patheos, November 12. Available online: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/filmchat/2014/11/meet-the-11-year-old-boywho-speaks-for-god-when-moses-sees-the-burning-bush-in-exodus-gods-and-kings. html (accessed February 4, 2017). Deleuze, Gilles (1997), Cinema 1: The Movement Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Faraci, Matthew (2014), “NYT: God ‘Willful Child’ in EXODUS is ‘Deal Breaker,’ says Faith Driven Consumer,” Faith Driven Consumer, December 1. Available online: http://www.faithdrivenconsumer.com/nyt_god_willful_child_in_exodus_is_deal_ breaker_says_faith_driven_consumer (accessed February 4, 2017). Freud, Sigmund (1919), “The Uncanny,” trans. Alix Strachey. Available online: http://web. mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf (accessed February 4, 2017). Koosed, Jennifer L. (2016), “The Cinematic Moses,” in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (ed.), The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of the Bible and Its Reception in Film, Vol. 1, 65–82, Handbooks of the Bible and its Reception 2, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Larsen, Josh (2014), “Why I’m OK with the Boy Yahweh in Exodus: Gods and Kings,” Think Christian, December 11. Available online: https://thinkchristian.reframemedia. com/why-im-ok-with-the-boy-yahweh-in-exodus-gods-and-kings (accessed February 4, 2017). Merritt, Jonathan (2014), “Christian Bale and Ridley Scott Talk Religion and ‘Exodus,’ An RNS Interview,” Religious News Service, December 10. Available online: http:// religionnews.com/2014/12/10/christian-bale-ridley-scott-talk-religion-exodus-rnsinterview/ (accessed February 4, 2017). Miles, Jack (1995), God: A Biography, New York: Alfred A. Knopf.



“What Child Is This?”

321

Patrick, Dale (1981), The Rendering of God in the Old Testament, Philadelphia: Fortress. Reinhartz, Adele (2013), Bible and Cinema: An Introduction, London and New York: Routledge. Russell, James (2004), “Foundation Myths: DreamWorks SKG, The Prince of Egypt (1998) and the Historical Epic Film,” New Review of Film and Television Studies, 2 (2): 233–55. Shoard, Catherine (2014), “Christian Bale: Moses Was ‘Schizophrenic’ and ‘Barbaric,’” The Guardian, October 27. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/ oct/27/christian-bale-moses-was-barbaric-and-schizophrenic (accessed February 4, 2017). Terrien, Samuel (1978), The Elusive Presence, New York: Harper & Row. Walsh, Richard (2003), Reading the Gospels in the Dark: Portrayals of Jesus in Film, Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Walsh, Richard (2010), Three Versions of Judas, London: Equinox. Walsh, Richard (2013), “A Beautiful Corpse: Fiction and Hagiography in Son of Man,” in Richard Walsh, Jeffrey L. Staley, and Adele Reinhartz (eds.), Son of Man: An African Jesus Film, 192–205, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Wood, Michael (1989), America in the Movies, 2nd ed., New York: Columbia University Press. Wright, Melanie J. (1996), “Moses at the Movies: Ninety Years of the Bible and Film,” Modern Believing, 37 (4): 46–54.

26

“What Shall We Do with the Tainted Maiden?”: Film Treatments of the Book of Esther Deborah W. Rooke

Introduction The story of Esther lends itself to dramatic treatment in light of its self-contained structure and its cast of four main characters who function in clearly defined relationships to each other, to say nothing of its rags-to-riches plot that sees good rewarded and evil punished. However, it presents problems as an edifying Bible story because of its strong focus on ethnicity rather than on religious devotion (at least, in the Hebrew and Protestant canons), its picture of Esther being taken into a harem, and its climactic slaughter of tens of thousands of people. Nevertheless, a number of film adaptations have been made.1 I shall comment briefly on four, dating from 1960 to 2013: three feature films and one art film. I shall focus on four elements that both encapsulate some of the films’ most distinctive characteristics and show how their creators sought to deal with the story’s unedifying aspects: the story’s background; how the narrative ends; Esther’s character; and each film’s theme.

Feature films of Esther The 1960 film Esther and the King is a fully developed epic made at the tail end of the Hollywood heyday of that genre. Indeed, the other two feature films to be considered— One Night with the King (2006) and The Book of Esther (2013)—draw on the 1960 version not only visually but also in terms of plot, although the pattern of influence is different in each case. All three are largely Christian productions, the latter two produced by companies with explicit Christian motivations.2

Background context Two of the versions portray elaborate political contexts as the background to the events described in the biblical book of Esther. Thus, the 1960 version opens with Ahasuerus



“What Shall We Do with the Tainted Maiden?”

323

returning home from battle having defeated Egypt but having failed to defeat Greece. The events from the book of Esther take place as the king plans war against the young Greek upstart Alexander. The conniving Haman plots against the Jews (usually called “Judeans”) both to strike back at his rival Mordecai (who is, like Haman, a minister of the king3) and to cover his own plot to overthrow the king, thefts from the royal coffers, and betrayal of military secrets to the Greeks. To prevent the king drawing on the royal coffers to fund a proposed tax cut and thereby discovering his embezzlement, Haman argues that in accordance with Persian law the Jews should be executed for not worshipping the god Mithras and their goods confiscated, which would raise the needed revenue. Esther immediately dismisses this suggestion because of its unenlightened principles; but later, Haman uses forged evidence to accuse the Jews of selling military secrets to the Greeks, for which Ahasuerus sentences them all to death. A similar political scenario forms the background to the 2006 version. Here the Persian king, Xerxes, has come to the throne after the death of his father Darius at the hands of the Greeks four years previously, and he feels duty-bound to go to war to avenge that defeat. Esther becoming queen and saving the Jews from annihilation play themselves out as Xerxes agonizes about whether to go to war, and is urged this way and that by various court factions; not surprisingly, Haman urges war. In this version, Greek democracy is part of the threat. It entirely counters Persia’s hierarchical society and would result in the king’s downfall were Persia to be conquered by Greece. As in the 1960 version the Jews become the scapegoats for fears about the Greek threat; here, though, it is not that the Jews are supposedly selling military secrets, but that their belief, as depicted by Haman, in a coming king who will be above all kings and will free all men is compatible with democracy, or is democracy by another name. Haman thus makes the Jews out to be covert Greek sympathizers and hence traitors to the Persian king. Accordingly, he urges killing them and plundering their property to plug the hole in the war finances, thereby solving two problems at once. The 2013 film has the least overtly political setting of the three. There is no external threat to the Persian empire. The background to Esther’s rise to queenship is the accession of a new king struggling to establish his throne, a scenario broadly comparable to the biblical text. However, this Haman is much more Machiavellian than that in the biblical text, and as in the 1960 film Mordecai has an important position as long-standing royal adviser, making him and Haman rivals at court. In the 2013 version, though, Haman does not plan to become king but simply the controlling power behind the throne, and Mordecai deliberately frustrates Haman at every turn. First, after Vashti’s dismissal, Haman offers his own daughter as the potential new queen, but Mordecai promptly offers another candidate (Esther), thereby forcing a competition between the two which Haman’s daughter loses. Later, Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman (just appointed as prime minister) when in a hurry to report to the king news of an assassination plot, and this affront finally prompts Haman to plot the destruction of the Jews. It is interesting to speculate on what might have provoked some of these elaborations. The 1960 version frames events with the external Greek threat, the question of loyalty to the Persian cause, and Haman’s political machinations to take over the empire, which causes the victimization of the Jews (or “Judeans”). Notably the film shows Judeans

324

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

high up in the royal administration: the chief of the king’s army is a Judean named Simon, Mordecai is a royal scribe and adviser, and both characters are shown as loyal and trusted Persian citizens whose distinctive religious and cultural inclinations are no threat to the empire. Given early post–Second World War sensitivity to the portrayal of Jews and anti-Semitism, it is easy to imagine that showing Mordecai and Simon as vital members of the establishment is a strategy for normalizing Jews and counteracting the outright suspicion and hostility to which they had so recently been brutally subjected. Notably the Judeans’ victimization is already under way at the start of the 1960 film. When Simon the Judean returns to his village from the king’s campaign against Egypt, he sees a corpse hanging from the village wall and Esther (his fiancée) urging the men of the village to take the hanged man down out of respect, even though Haman has ordered him hanged for failing to pay taxes and threatens to hang ten more if he is taken down. After Vashti has been deposed, Mordecai expresses to Esther and Simon his fears for the safety of the Judeans in Persia if events at the palace are not carefully managed. A little later, soldiers gathering maidens for the king snatch Esther from her wedding ceremony. Simon wounds the soldiers’ commander before fleeing, and the commander orders all the Hebrew settlements sacked and their people flogged as retribution for Simon’s attack. The decree to eliminate all the Judeans from the empire is thus the culmination of a series of injustices perpetrated against them, which stem from both Haman’s hatred of Mordecai and his need for a “fall guy.” Again, this recalls the Second World War situation, in which the so-called final solution was the culmination of a series of oppressive measures aimed specifically at the Jews. If the 1960 version resonates particularly in a postwar context, the 2006 version, with its scaremongering about democracy, resonates similarly in a post-9/11 world. Haman’s protestations about how dangerous democracy is to Persian society sound like the imputed opinions of factions such as those who attacked the New York World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. But the film also shows the defeat of such antidemocracy voices, as Haman is exposed and punished, and it highlights that there are those within the hierarchical structures who are open to a more conciliatory approach (as embodied in the Persian prince and general Memucan, and the king himself). Indeed, the king’s preferred approach is to build up Persia’s cultural heritage and pursue the rivalry with Greece via non-military means. In fact, the entire question of war slips into the background and the initial Persian defeat goes unavenged. When this is taken together with the king’s ultimate support of the Jewish cause—the principles of which are equated with Western democratic values and expressed in highly Christianized terms (all men born equal; all men to be freed by the coming messianic king)—the plot seems to affirm the inevitable triumph of Western Christian democratic ideals over Middle Eastern autocratic hierarchy. Another important motif is the implicit link between Haman and the Amalekites in the biblical text, which also explains Haman’s disproportionately vicious response to Mordecai’s refusal to bow to him (compare Est. 3:1-6).4 This motif does not appear in the 1960 version; perhaps it would have been politically indelicate then to suggest that the Jews (or, more accurately, their Hebraic forerunners) were themselves capable of genocide. But the Amalekite aspect is highly significant in the 2006 version. This film begins by setting the events of the Esther narrative in the context not simply of



“What Shall We Do with the Tainted Maiden?”

325

the Persian-Greek wars but also of the clash between King Saul and the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15). In the film, Saul, acting on divine instructions, wipes out the entire Amalekite nation because of their depravity, but disobediently spares the Amalekite king Agag and his wife. The prophet Samuel rebukes Saul and kills Agag, but Agag’s pregnant wife escapes and gives birth to a son. She prophesies that a deliverer will arise who will be a descendant of Agag and will avenge the slaughter of the Amalekites. In the 2006 film, Haman is the prophesied deliverer, a sort of anti-messiah figure, and he is very conscious of his destiny to avenge his people. He plots against the Jews to fulfill that destiny. Indeed, it becomes more important in this film to show how Haman’s plans work out than to know whether the king decides to go to war with the Greeks. The 2013 version emphasizes the Amalekite question less than the 2006 film; nevertheless, it is still a factor in Haman’s motivation. An allusion to it occurs when Haman is discussing with his wife how to gain control in the kingdom and states his intention to take vengeance on “those insidious Jews whose king exterminated my people.” Finally, all of the films have a quite serious nature, presenting the events in the book of Esther as a life-and-death crisis narrowly averted. Perhaps the historicizing impulse in the 1960 and 2006 films, locating the narratives against specific and known historical backgrounds, intends to imply the narratives had their basis in fact (even though the films’ historical details do not correspond to what is known of them from ancient sources).5 It could also be to make them feel less foreign by linking them with the more familiar Greco-Roman milieu. One recalls the Gospel of Luke’s location of Jesus’s nativity in the context of the then Roman emperor and local governor (Lk. 2:1-2; compare Lk. 3:1-2), regardless of how accurate the details of that context may be. This serious, historicizing impulse directly contradicts the Jewish traditions surrounding the celebration of Purim, for which Esther serves as etiology, and which is characterized by a carnivalesque, pantomime-like understanding of the Esther story. The contrast between the films’ presentations and the nature of Purim probably reflects the films’ Christian production as Christian tradition has always taken the book of Esther as a serious rather than a comic work; it may also reflect postwar sensibilities, according to which a comic treatment of the book in a major feature film would be far too offensive.

How the narrative ends The end of the biblical Esther shows the Jews killing thousands of Persians, ostensibly to protect themselves, and then instituting a festival celebrating the occasion (Esther 9). Esther also specifically requests that Haman’s ten sons be strung up on the gallows to make an exhibition of them (Est. 9:13-14). The persecuted become the persecutors, and treat their would-be oppressors in the way that they were expecting to be treated themselves. The films treat this aspect very differently. In the 1960 Esther and the King, once Haman’s treachery and his plot against the Jews have been discovered the king himself arms the Jews, and they come out of their synagogue fighting against the soldiers whom Haman sends. Their resistance thus is self-defense against a professional

326

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

military force, rather than against a terrified general populace as Est. 8:17 and 9:2-3 imply. Perhaps more importantly, the Jews are given official backing: the powers that be step in to enable them to resist their victimization. Mordecai and Esther institute the commemorative feast as they tend to the dying Simon: Mordecai says, “This night of deliverance must live in memory. Haman cast Pur to decide our doom so let it be called Purim.” Simon adds, “And let it be remembered with holidays and gladness like those we used to know back in the village.” Mordecai says, “So it shall be, my lion of Israel,” as Simon dies. The festival is thus established in a rather subdued manner, given the deliverance’s cost. By contrast, the final segment of the 2006 One Night with the King runs for less than a minute: the king promotes Mordecai to the rank of Prince of Persia and Mordecai dictates a decree giving the Jews the right to protect themselves and take their attackers’ property. The film then shows Persian mounted messengers carrying the decree throughout the empire and the people rejoicing, while Mordecai’s continuing voiceover instructs the Jews to commemorate their deliverance in the festival of Purim. The 2013 The Book of Esther is even more restrained: the king simply reverses the decree so that there is no need for any fighting, and then commands that henceforth this will be a time of joy and happiness for the Jews before telling Mordecai to order a banquet. The only person to die is Haman, and even that is off-screen. The idea of a Jewish retaliation has perhaps become too uncomfortable to contemplate in the current political climate, given the bitter ongoing struggle between Israel and Palestine and particularly its escalation in recent years. Instead, a powerful third party declares the Jews’ right to exist, thereby soothing the strife between the two factions, which has been propagated for purely malicious purposes. In fact, in the 1960 and 2013 versions it is the king, not Mordecai and Esther, who preserves the Jews from their enemies by issuing arms or orders. By contrast, in the biblical version the king hands over authority to Mordecai and Esther to write what they want about how to protect the Jews from Haman’s pogrom (Est. 8:7-10).

Esther Despite its name, Mordecai eclipses Esther in the biblical tale to some extent. All three feature films, however, develop her into a complex, influential character. In the 1960 Esther and the King Esther is a bold and virtuous young woman who resists Haman’s tyranny and already fights effectively for her people even before she becomes queen. She is also pious, praying for guidance and strength. She is in love with and betrothed to Simon the Judean soldier, and when the king selects her from a beauty-pageant parade of maidens to be his new queen, she is torn and takes a long time to decide to marry the king. In this respect she is Vashti’s antithesis; Vashti is a sexual temptress with many lovers, and is dismissed by the king for her infidelity. Once the king has chosen Esther as his new queen, but before the two are married, Haman secretly threatens Esther to manipulate her into cooperation with him, but she rebuffs him decisively. She persuades the king to govern more benignly and to grant tax concessions and exercise religious tolerance, so that the Jews can worship their own



“What Shall We Do with the Tainted Maiden?”

327

God even though Haman is insisting they be put to death for not worshipping Mithras. She is faithful to the king, but when during the king’s absence Haman attempts to seize power and destroy the Jews, she escapes from the palace to join the rest of the Jews in the synagogue as they prepare to defend themselves. There she encounters her erstwhile fiancé Simon again, and though he is killed in the ensuing struggle, she does not return to the king after the crisis has passed. However, she still retains her affection for the king, and at the end when the king returns defeated from battle with the Greeks, she runs out to join him. Apparently the two of them live happily together thereafter. The 2006 One Night with the King Esther is again a very sparky young woman who nags Mordecai into giving her permission to go to Jerusalem, imagines being queen, and is attracted to Jesse ben Joseph, their housekeeper’s grandson (Jesse thus slightly resembles Simon in the 1960 film). She worries about how she would keep the Jewish law if she were chosen to be queen. She is intelligent, well-read, and resourceful in how she negotiates her way through the palace, and she wins the king’s heart by telling him the story of Jacob and Rachel rather than by spending a night with him. She loves and is faithful to Xerxes, even though Jesse tempts her to come away with him to Jerusalem. Despite her faithfulness, Xerxes mistakes Esther’s meeting with Mordecai for a lovers’ tryst, and this misunderstanding accounts for their thirty-day separation before she goes to him to plead for the Jews. She is pious, praying for guidance and strength before going to the king. Her headstrong traits notwithstanding, she seems young by comparison with the king, and when she enters the council chamber and is threatened with immediate execution, she faints into his arms, a plot twist taken from the Septuagint version of Esther (Est. 5:1-2 LXX). She is also shown as vulnerable to Haman, who is very menacing to her on several occasions. When she attempts to unmask Haman, he denies her accusations and pours scorn on her claim to be Jewish, making her out to be a traitor. Then, while the king is out of the room collecting his thoughts, Haman threatens her rather than begging for mercy, so the king’s timely return has the three-fold effect of convincing him of Esther’s integrity, sealing Haman’s fate, and saving Esther from Haman. In the 2013 The Book of Esther Esther is a young(ish) woman desperate to get married, who likes the look of the (young) king from afar. But when Vashti is banished, Esther sympathizes with Vashti’s desire not to be turned into a spectacle, and argues with Mordecai about whether one should obey the king when he orders something unacceptable, such as not celebrating the Sabbath. Again, this Esther is clearly very pious: she prays for guidance about the contest to become queen, and is willing to go forward when she receives divine assurance that all is in God’s hands. She is magnanimous and generous to Haman’s daughter Zara, who is her rival for the queenship, and this magnanimity as well as her beauty earns the king’s favor. When she meets the king, she persuades him to sit beside her instead of sitting above her on his throne, and makes him promise fidelity to her before she agrees to marry him. She obeys the rules about staying away from the king, until forced to approach him on the Jews’ behalf, when she insists on being taken there by the eunuch even though he thinks it a bad idea. The long separation between her and the king is due to Haman constantly engaging the king in discussion of political affairs. At her banquet with the king and Haman she is eloquent in her defense of the Jews, and manages to swing the

328

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

king’s opinion in favor of Mordecai by asking the king what he himself would do when faced with a conflict of loyalties between God and king. Indeed, unlike the 2006 Esther, she almost seems to be older and wiser than the king. All three films, therefore, expand the character of Esther beyond her presentation in the biblical text. They all show Esther as articulate and independent-minded from the beginning, rather than simply doing what Mordecai tells her (compare Est. 2:20); they all explore her feelings about the marriage process and her relationship with the king, a matter absent from the Hebrew text; they all show Esther as a pious young woman who prays for strength and guidance, again something absent from the Hebrew text; and they all show the relationship between Esther and the king as non-sexual until the two are actually married. The idea that the king chose Esther because of spending a night with her (Est. 2:12-17) was unpalatable to the producers, and incompatible with the mores of a devout girl like Esther (despite the 2006 film being called One Night with the King), and so various more acceptable alternatives have been adopted to account for how Esther manages to win the king’s heart.

The theme of the story Most interestingly each film has a distinctive message not necessarily corresponding to that promulgated in the Hebrew text. The 1960 Esther and the King has a definite concern with religious freedom.6 The idea that the Jews can worship freely in Persia appears early, when Esther wishes that she and her fiancé Simon could go to their real home in Judah, but Simon replies that she was born in Persia, has never seen Judah (which the king of Persia also rules), and that here in Persia they worship their own God.7 Shortly afterward, Haman speaks scornfully to the king about Lord Mordecai worshipping his invisible Hebrew God; then, when the three men are in council together, Haman again challenges Mordecai about the Jews’ refusal to worship the Persian gods, and speaks scornfully of Mordecai’s unseen God. At Esther’s coronation, Haman quotes a law of Cyrus that anyone not bowing to the Persians’ god Mithras will be executed and their goods confiscated, and says the Judeans defiantly worship an alien god. He therefore offers to annihilate the people and enrich the king by ten thousand talents of silver. Esther, however, urges the king not to follow the law, but to stand against intolerance; and the king duly allows the Judeans to worship as they please. Later, although the king is temporarily persuaded that the Judeans are traitors, an opinion that is partly based on their worship of a different God, when he realizes his mistake he arms them so they can protect themselves against Haman’s soldiers. He thereby implicitly affirms their right to worship as they see fit. Once Haman has been dealt with, the Judean community and its synagogue in Susa continue to flourish, implying that the king has kept to his decision to allow the Jews religious freedom. The 2006 One Night with the King has certain similarities with the 1960 version in its themes, although they are differently expressed. There is a strong focus on Esther as her people’s deliverer; the film opens with Mordecai’s voiceover about whether the purpose of a person’s life is destiny and the strange occurrence that little Hadassah (Esther’s



“What Shall We Do with the Tainted Maiden?”

329

original name, according to Est. 2:7) was chosen to stop her people’s annihilation. This invites a reading of the film as primarily the story of how Esther fulfilled her life’s purpose to prevent her people being wiped out, a theme that is more subdued in the 1960 version. Alongside the focus on Esther’s personal destiny in the 2006 version is a theme of tolerance for those who hold different convictions, which is somewhat like the religious freedom theme of the 1960 version. In the 2006 version, Haman’s plan to dispose of the Jews is to present their corporate values as democracy by another name, thereby making them look like Greek sympathizers and hence traitors to the Persians, who need to be annihilated for Persian security. However, Esther’s appeal to the king makes no mention of religious freedom or the right to follow one’s conscience, but focuses on her own Jewishness and the fact that Mordecai, a Jew, saved the king from an assassination plot. As such, Esther’s appeal relies on ad hominem examples of faithful and supportive Jews—herself and Mordecai—rather than on general principles of human rights. One might see this focus on the clash between Haman and the Jews, rather than on wider issues such as religious freedom, as more similar to the biblical narrative than the 1960 version is. Indeed, religion is virtually absent from the Hebrew text. The 2013 The Book of Esther is more religious and more ideological than the 2006 version. Mordecai and Esther are both concerned about keeping the Jewish law, and they discuss it over Sabbath dinner. Elsewhere Mordecai is overtly religious, quoting from the scripture repeatedly while carrying out his official duties, and this allows Haman to attack him when he looks up the scripture and finds material about God as King, which is then presented to the Persian king as treason. The idea that the Jews would follow the demands of their religion before those of the Persian king if the two clashed is presented as a dangerous state of affairs, but when Esther is able to show that such a clash has never arisen, the king happily decides in favor of freedom of conscience on the grounds that kings are fallible, and to allow the Jews to continue their worship as had previous kings. Interestingly, freedom is expressed in terms of conscience rather than of religion, even though it is effectively the same freedom as that granted in the 1960 film. It seems a more modern reframing of the dilemma.

Summary These three feature films all treat the biblical Esther as the serious tale of a narrowly avoided tragedy for the Jews, and all appeal for tolerance and acceptance, particularly in religious belief and observance. They heighten the drama by making Esther’s character and motivations more complex, and by adding additional factors to the setting to thicken the plot. Notably, they gloss over unpalatable aspects of the biblical story, which might mar Esther’s character, such as her spending a night with the king in order to gain the position of queen, and her requesting an additional day of slaughter when the Jews defend themselves against their enemies. The films thus align Esther and her story with the moral values of the filmmakers, and render the tale an exemplar of good triumphing over evil, with Esther as a model of virtuous womanhood.

330

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

The art film Esther Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai’s Esther (1986) differs from the previously discussed films because it is a Jewish rather than a (predominantly) Christian treatment. It uses large parts of the Hebrew text of Esther as its script. Indeed, the film’s main language is Hebrew (both biblical and modern), though it also includes several songs in Arabic. The film rearranges some events and interpretatively expands the sometimes excessively curt biblical narrative, as when Vashti refuses Ahasuerus’s request to attend the feast; despite this, however, the film adheres more closely to the Hebrew text of Esther than any other film considered here—at least in three out of the four aspects that have been under consideration.

Background context First of all, no context other than that provided by the biblical text is given for Gitai’s film. The location is supposedly ancient Persia in the third year of King Ahasuerus’s reign, and the only parties involved are Persians and Jews, with no mention of potential Greek threats. Like the Hebrew book of Esther, the film opens with Ahasuerus’s banquet depicted as lavish entertainment with a voiceover of Esther 1 from the Hebrew text. No other film examined here begins with the banquet.8

How the narrative ends Secondly, as well as reproducing the biblical setting unelaborated, Gitai’s film remains true to the story’s unpalatable ending. The book of Esther’s climactic mass slaughter is not shown, but Mordecai and Esther ask the king’s permission and give the commands for the Jews’ right to self-defense against Haman’s decree and even for the second day of slaughter in Susa and for hanging Haman’s ten sons on the gallows (Est. 9:11-14). The other films reviewed here make no reference to this gratuitous prolonging of the slaughter—not surprisingly, since they are generally so coy about the idea of any Jewish armed resistance to the Persian persecutors.

Esther Thirdly, Gitai’s presentation of Esther is closely modeled on the character in the Hebrew text.9 She is not really fleshed out beyond that, and she certainly does not have another love interest or a yearning to be queen or to be married as she does in the other films. Her feelings toward the king are not explored in detail; however, when she is brought before the king the camera focuses in on her and she speaks, in a voiceover Cant. 2:16-3:4a in which the female lover speaks of searching for her beloved. Gitai’s Esther does not pray or appeal to God for aid, which she does in the



“What Shall We Do with the Tainted Maiden?”

331

other treatments considered here, but which she does not do in the Hebrew narrative. Unlike all the other versions considered here, Gitai’s film shows Esther’s beautification quite explicitly, in a bathhouse where bare-breasted maidens bathe and massage other maidens and a singer sings “O little girl, tomorrow you will be a woman.” A narrator also describes the procedure for spending a night with the king as it appears in Esther 2. Following the beautification Esther is presented to the king in his throne room, and then they are shown at night alone together where he places a headdress on her to acknowledge her as the one he has chosen. This is the nearest any of the films come to showing Esther spending a night with the king.

Theme Despite the film’s close dependence on the Hebrew text, however, the film’s perspective differs from that of the biblical text. At first glance the film has no theme other than Esther and Mordecai thwarting the Jews’ unmerited destruction. But the film’s subtext is that the Jews themselves, having been subject to prejudicial persecution and pogroms, have now become persecutors, specifically of the Palestinians in Israel. This comes through in several ways. First, as noted above, even though the film does not show the Jews’ destruction of their enemies, it alone among the films considered here includes Esther’s request for a second day of slaughter in Susa. Indeed, Gitai says in an interview that a leading Israeli newspaper accused him of changing the Bible because he included this part; however, Gitai claims it was included precisely because it has been erased from the collective memory and most people think the book of Esther ends happily. For Gitai, these few biblical verses show the contradiction of power (in Toubiana 2006: 58). Second, when the decree for the Jews’ annihilation is issued, its language, which reflects that of Est. 3:13a-g (LXX), is highly reminiscent of modern political declarations about Israel’s safety and security. A herald announces that Ahasuerus wants to reign in peace and justice and mercy; the command to exterminate the Jews follows. Then, having moved somewhere else, the herald reads from the decree about this people with their foreign laws who are subverting our mutual government, hostile to our shared security, and bound to do evil, and declares that they alienate themselves from the world community by keeping to their foreign laws. He wanders through a farmyard scene with scratching dogs and clothes hanging around, reading this, and then declares that all those named by Haman will be destroyed on a single day. Then he reads it outside Mordecai’s open door, and says that by destroying our enemies we shall obtain peace and security. Next he walks past a series of tumbledown shacks in which people are sitting, saying the same thing, and Mordecai comes up the other way past him. Mordecai responds, “They want to destroy an innocent people. They are persecuting an innocent people.” Clearly, the “innocent people” in the narrative context refers to the Jews; but the language of destroying a recalcitrant people for the sake of peace and security evokes modern Israeli concerns about the Palestinian presence, and the images of those to whom the herald reads the decree evoke the same Palestinian presence. This visual evocation of the Palestinians is related to a third aspect, namely, that the film is

332

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

shot in a ruined Arab part of Haifa (Gitai and Michelson 2001: 65)10 and has modern traffic sounds in the background, which serves as an audio-visual reminder of the two cultures currently striving for survival in Israel. Fourth, at the end of the film all the actors reflect on their own life experiences and on what participating in the film has meant for them. This is connected with a fifth aspect, namely, that the cast is a mix of Israeli and Palestinian actors, and though Esther is played by an Israeli Jew, Mordecai is played by a Palestinian. For a Palestinian Mordecai to hear the annihilation decree in Hebrew from the mouth of an Israeli-played herald and to conclude that “they are persecuting an innocent people” is thus unexpectedly double-edged. By using these means, even while adhering closely to the biblical Esther, Gitai superimposes a meaning opposite of the one that emerges from a surface reading of the biblical text, thereby reflecting on the present-day situation in Israel. Notably, too, for all his close adherence to the biblical text Gitai has not followed the traditional Jewish carnivalesque reading of Esther but has presented a deadly serious one,11 and this again implies that the film is addressing something other than simply the festival legend of Purim.

Conclusion Esther has tended to be a difficult biblical book for Christians to appropriate because of its strongly Jewish character and its questionable ethics in the realms of both sex and violence. Yet several recent film presentations of Esther have been produced by Christians, and all have adapted the story in a way that resonates with a Christian agenda to a greater or lesser extent. By contrast, the one version from an Israeli producer has maintained the Jewish character of the story but infused it with a critique of contemporary political realities in Israel. All of the films, however, demonstrate the appeal of the book’s basic plotline whereby in a dramatic reversal of fates powerful evil is overcome by supposedly powerless good. As such, the book of Esther is probably destined for future cinematic interpretations.

Notes 1 For reasons of space, I do not discuss television productions, films made before 1960, and animated films. Silent versions were made in 1910, 1913, 1916, and a talkie in 1948. Animated versions include Queen Esther (1992), part of the 1985–93 The Greatest Adventure: Stories of the Bible, and Esther, the Girl Who Became Queen (2000) in the VeggieTales series. 2 One of Esther and the King’s screenwriters was Michael Elkins, a Jewish journalist who later became the BBC foreign correspondent in Jerusalem; but it was a joint ItalianAmerican production directed by Raoul Walsh whose heritage was Roman Catholic. The independent Christian film company Gener8Xion Entertainment produced One Night with the King (2006), based on itinerant preacher Tommy Tenney’s novel, directed by Michael O. Sajbel with a screenplay by Stephan Blinn, both of whom are committed Christians. See their “confessional” interviews (respectively ChristianCinema.com



“What Shall We Do with the Tainted Maiden?”

333

2007b,a). Similarly, Pure Flix, an independent Christian film company, produced The Book of Esther. In its own words the company “produces, distributes, and acquires Christ centered movies for the sole purpose of changing our culture for Christ, one heart at a time” (Pure Flix n.d.). For an interview with David A. R. White, the company’s chief executive and the producer/director of The Book of Esther, see Sahms 2015. 3 This idea appears in the LXX (Est. 1:1a-b) in which Mordecai is an important man at court. 4 Many scholars see an Amalekite link in the Haman and Mordecai clash. Mordecai is a descendant of Kish, a Benjaminite (Est. 2:5), and Haman is an Agagite (Est. 3:1). Kish is the father of Saul, Israel’s first king (1 Sam. 9:1-2), and Agag is king of the Amalekites (1 Sam. 15:8), enemies of Israel whom Saul fights and exterminates. The enmity between Mordecai and Haman may therefore be a continuation of the enmity between Saul and Agag. 5 Persia engaged in military conflicts with both Egypt and Greece; however, neither the situation in the 1960 film where the Persian king has subdued Egypt but is still to subdue a Greek force led by Alexander the Great, nor that in the 2006 film where a recently acceded son of Darius feels the need to defeat the Greeks to avenge his father’s death, corresponds with what is known of ancient Persian history. 6 This religious aspect is absent from the Hebrew book of Esther but pervades the Greek versions. The LXX version begins and ends with a figurative dream sent by God to Mordecai, which portrays Mordecai and Haman as two fighting dragons, and thus interprets God’s control of the events (1:1a-l, 10:3a-k). Both Mordecai and Esther pray long prayers before Esther pleads with the king for the Jews (4:17-17z); and the decree to reverse the effects of Haman’s pogrom describes the Jews as children of the Most High, the great and living God (8:12q). 7 It is tempting to hear in this a reflection of modern-era debates over whether a “return” to Israel is appropriate for Diaspora Jews. 8 The Greatest Adventure Series’ “Esther” begins with the banquet (contextualized as an adventure of three teenage archaeologists). 9 An exception is Esther’s words when she approaches the king unsummoned to plead for the Jews. She says, “Like an angel of God you appear to me, O my master, and your magnificence fills my heart with fear and awe, for you are idolized.” This reflects the LXX (Est. 5:2a), rather than the Hebrew text. 10 The nineteenth-century neighborhood was inhabited by Arabs until 1948. Thereafter it became a refuge for Moroccan Jews. In the late fifties they rioted, so the authorities moved the population out and destroyed the area. See Klein (1993: 32) and Gitai (1993: 89). 11 That said, Harel shows how the characteristic Purim spirit of inversion pervades Gitai’s film despite its somber mood (2014: 251–54).

Works cited ChristianCinema.com (2007a), “Christians in Cinema: Stephan Blinn,” February 5. Available online: http://www.christiancinema.com/catalog/newsdesk_info. php?newsdesk_id=307 (accessed January 3, 2017). ChristianCinema.com (2007b), “Christians in Cinema: Michael Sajbel,” August 17. Available online: http://www.christiancinema.com/catalog/newsdesk_info. php?newsdesk_id=409 (accessed January 3, 2017).

334

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Gitai, Amos (1993), “Gitai on Gitai,” in Paul Willemen (ed.), The Films of Amos Gitai: A Montage, 71–97, London, British Film Institute. Gitai, Amos, and Annette Michelson (2001), “Filming Israel: A Conversation,” October, 98: 47–75. Harel, Naama (2014), “The Book of Esther and Persecutor-Persecuted Politics in Manger’s Megile-Lider and Gitai’s Esther,” in Helen Leneman and Barry Dov Walfish (eds.), The Bible Retold by Jewish Artists, Writers, Composers and Filmmakers, 244–55, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Klein, Irma (1993), “An Architectonics of Responsibility,” in Paul Willemen (ed.), The Films of Amos Gitai: A Montage, 24–36, London: British Film Institute. Pure Flix (n.d.). Available online: http://pureflixstudio.com/about-us/ (accessed January 3, 2017). Sahms, Jacob (2015), “David A. R. White Wants to Make Bold Christian Films,” ChristianCinema.com, June 17. Available online: http://www.christiancinema.com/ catalog/newsdesk_info.php?newsdesk_id=3282 (accessed January 3, 2017). Toubiana, Serge (2006), “Interview with Amos Gitai,” in Il cinema di Amos Gitai. Frontiere e territory, Milan: Bruno Mondadori; reproduced in the DVD set Inventario Gitai: Tornare dove (non) si è (mai) stati booklet, RVD 40092, Raro Video.

27

Desert Tales: Mark and Last Days in the Desert Tina Pippin

Introduction: Where the wild things are The voiceover in the trailer for Last Days in the Desert (2015) pronounces, “A holy man  .  .  . an endless desert.” With this simple premise director Rodrigo García reimagines the story of Jesus’s temptation. In his story Jesus is not alone; he encounters a Bedouin family that disrupts his solitude and exposes the limits of any idealized retelling of the gospel story. Gospel of Mark, unencumbered by Luke and Matthew’s additions, provides an easier portal. The sparse details spark dreams. The temptation to add to Mark’s story is really an obligation, one that traditional historical critical readings are unable to fulfill. Mark agitates for a creative response, as in his open-ended “ending” in 16:8. Even stuck between and overshadowed by Matthew and Luke, Mark wriggles free, first in flight. A film and a novel occupy my time in this conversation with Mark’s version of the wilderness adventure: Rodrigo García’s Last Days in the Desert and Jim Crace’s Quarantine (1998a). In both adaptations the desert is a main character. The desert is a powerful biblical image, from the expulsion from Eden onward: “a place of testing, judgment, punishment, purification, self-denial and sacrifice, a theme dramatically continued through the New Testament” (Welland 2015: 188). The desert stillness is full of action and characters beyond Jesus. There are other seekers, Bedouins, bandits, prophets, and false prophets. And everyone dreams in the desert—dreams of violence, of healing, of the future, of gods and demons. The desert is where wild tales are told, and where the wild things are, and where the wild gods roam.

A desert tale The temptation falls early in Mark; a dripping-wet Jesus steps into the wilderness for his shamanistic vision quest. In Mark there is no time to tarry, or to banter further with John the Baptist over a meal of locusts and honey about theology or messianic models. In Mark it is as if Jesus steps into a wormhole and out the other side; the forty days fly by. As a reader I want to tarry; there is a hesitation in the text, a sure sign of

336

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

the fantastic. Satan, wild beasts, and angels amount to a magical gathering. There is danger (Satan, beasts, the wilderness place); what was the nature of this tempting? There is also support by angels. What does it mean that they “waited on him?” Were they assistants during his journey? Or did they wait until he finished? Was Jesus triumphant? Mark leaves the reader to fill in the story’s gaps, as Luke and Matthew did with renditions of Jesus’s conversation with Satan/the Devil. Mark’s silence is too great. We do not get a story of Jesus as a lion tamer (like Daniel). Or as a tortured soul (like Job or the Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ 1988). Or as a holy man holding deep certainty (like Jesus in The Greatest Story Ever Told 1965). We get a Jesus we hardly know; the Markan introduction and the resume (“Christ, the Son of God”—Mk 1:1; and “my Son, the Beloved”—Mk 1:11) are bold but sparse descriptors. By the time of his desert adventure Jesus has not spoken a word. Mark’s baptism and days in the desert serve as a sort of pre-passion narrative; they are passages to the passion. Jesus faces death in order to face death. He goes to the depths of earth (a forty-day quest in the wilderness) and emerges intact and ready to start a movement, preaching the good news and immediately calling disciples, healing, and preaching—all in the first chapter. Satan is (sort of) left behind as Jesus moves on, but we do not know what passed between the two. Mark does not mention fasting or whether or not Jesus had other provisions or shelter, luring the reader into a brief glimpse of desert dangers. The sparse details tempt the reader to invent, to wander/ wonder with/at Jesus. Mark’s short text lends itself to tinkering, adding stories onto stories. So pick any of the main nouns—wilderness, Satan, wild beast, angels—they are portals into other possible worlds. Mark’s desert tale has holes, and a lot of wind blowing around and through it. To linger in the story we do more than read between the lines. We must go deep, burrow underneath the words, dropping from the printed letters to the text’s interior, to a desert place, a blankness that purports a nothingness. But there is room to roam and imagine new speech acts and characters—interiors upon interiors. In this space we may discover that Mark does not tell the end (or beginning) of his tales. Jesus is not born of a god-impregnated Mary. Jesus is not triumphant over Satan. Jesus does not resurrect from the tomb. The women do not tell anyone of the empty tomb. Jesus does not fix the world; the Romans are still the imperial power; Satan and his minions still live in the desert and in the sick. Jesus is sent into the story (and the desert) as a sacrificial goat. In the end he is forsaken by his absent, silent father, and by his disciples. Others must embellish the story.

The place of light and shadows In Last Days in the Desert Yeshua’s (Jesus) first line is, “Father, where are you?” Yeshua wanders the desert beseeching his father, whom he has never seen, to speak to him. There are only hot days, bitterly cold nights, sandstorms, and silence in Jesus’s vision quest. This white, blue-eyed Holy Man, equipped with an inner and outer robe, a scarfblanket, sandals, a bedroll, bag, and water bladder, treks through a hilly wilderness of grand vistas. Yeshua hallucinates an encounter with a Demon (snake?) Woman. He



Desert Tales: Mark and Last Days in the Desert

337

gives her water, only to have her hiss in return before disappearing. “The serpent is one of the most important archetypes of the human soul. It is the most earthen of animals. It is truly an animalized root and, where images are concerned, the link between the vegetable and animal kingdom” (Bachelard 2011: 192; Bachelard’s emphasis). The image of the serpent is also sexual—both phallic and female. In Scorsese’s rendition of Jesus’s temptations, the serpent speaks seductively, with the voice of Mary Magdalene, accompanied by the sound of her bracelets. Encased in his shaman circle, Jesus looks out into the dark desert night into moments of emptiness and demons. This circle is the womb that births him into consciousness. Is Jesus dreaming of Eden? Or is he dreaming of defeating the great apocalyptic dragon? The river Jordan, the wadis of the desert landscape, the serpent (real and of dreams) are all earthly shapes. Bachelard also outlines the serpent’s literary uses: “Everything becomes animate when our pens dream, be it festoon, creeper, or serpent, or even life that is intertwined, twisted, and coiled up” (2011: 199). The serpent is cosmic, is soul, is earth. “An image that ranks as a fundamental image becomes the fundamental matter of our imagination. This is true of each of the four elements” (2011: 202). The serpent as earth is naked desire, good and evil, beginning and end. In García’s film Jesus is his own Satan; he avenges himself with his twin image. Satan knows God and knows who Yeshua is, and follows him on his trek to torment him and undermine his confidence. Yeshua and the desert Satan debate, often faceto-face. Satan asks him to name one thing he learned in the desert and Yeshua replies, “Man makes do, anywhere.” Satan counters with a multiverse theory that God is always creating new worlds and possible destinies: “You think you’re his only child. There are others.” Yeshua disagrees, “No. There is only me.” Yeshua then wants to know, “Is there a face?” Satan replies, “No. There is no face.” And in response to Yeshua’s reaction, Satan adds, “What anger! You are your father’s son.” Satan represents Jesus’s interior struggle with God’s silence and absence. The desert is the place for this struggle between fathers and sons, and for encountering the convergence of inner and outer hostility. The desert is a place for dreaming. Jesus goes to the earth to dream, to descend and face the serpent. The film’s images—cross, stones, thorns, serpent, sky, desert—are potential threats. Yeshua lies down on the earth and dreams of death. In the end, men lay him in his desert tomb. Jesus returns to the desert, to the earth. Gaston Bachelard, with his Jungian framework, calls such dreaming “the Jonah complex”; the descent is always into the past (2011: 90). Yeshua dreams on the margins, with the constant threat of being swallowed up—by the river, by the earth, by the demons, by Empire. In his nightmares he drowns and is chased by wolves; he levitates over the canyons. Each dream is rooted in the landscape. For Bachelard the human will is accompanied by “the dynamic existence of the resistant world” (2011: 13). The wilderness aggressively resists: extreme temperatures, steep cliffs, dangerous wildlife, and the presence of evil (real and imagined). The dream of the possibilities— of continued life and of death—calls everything into question. Bachelard notes that “the struggles of earth and water, the marriage of earth and water, their endless sadomasochistic exchanges, provide countless case studies for a psychoanalysis of material and dynamic imagery” (2002: 57). For Yeshua’s nightmares: “The monsters we encounter are but the externalized projections of our inner torments” (2002: 307).

338

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

In his interpretation of Jesus’s temptation in Paradise Regained (1671), Milton reads Luke, but calls out the Satan figure’s ties to the Leviathan, the dragon, the sea monster, and finally, the serpent in the Eden story. As in the book of Job, Satan makes a grand bet on Jesus’s life and then disappears as a story character. By emerging victorious from the wilderness, Jesus becomes a dragon killer (Frye 2005: 116). Jesus descends first into water, and then into desert; this ascent/descent/ascent theme provides the structure for Jesus’s preparation for ministry. The serpent of the watery chaos is also the serpent of the dry wilderness. These images are present in the film as well, as Yeshua becomes more entangled with the family dynamics, and Satan hurls taunts and triggers Yeshua’s self-doubt. Yeshua’s confrontations with Satan are also with himself. In the film Yeshua’s revelation comes in relationship with the family he encounters in the desert. He wants to help the family and does so with his carpentry skills—and his compassion. He is unable to heal or work miracles. The relationships, like the rocks and the house the father is building for his son, are unstable. With such abundance of sky, air, and wind, there is a shortness of breath: the sick mother, the elderly father, those who carry heavy corpses (Yeshua and later his pallbearers). By the late fourth and early fifth centuries the desert in Judea became a place of Christian pilgrimage and asceticism, with “approximately three thousand” monks (Wilken 1992: 165). Jesus (and Abraham, Moses, and Elijah before him) started a desert movement. The Christian monks used biblical language about Jerusalem and Judea “to speak about the Christian communities living in the land. Which is to say, Christians were beginning to give the biblical promises a political or historical interpretation” (Wilken 1992: 164). Reading backward from the desert fathers to the biblical desert stories, G. G. Harpham notes the desert’s “binary grammar of temptation. Under one aspect the desert is a scene of primal rectitude in which man and beast exist without disharmony. . . . But in an equally accepted trope the desert is the allotted domain of demons. As such the desert brings sin to man . . .” (1987: 69). Jacques Derrida speaks of “desertification” (1998: 21; see discussion in Branch 2003: 813–14). John Caputo draws on the Derridian concept of khôra, “the placeless place of absolute spacing” (1997: 156). Caputo calls Derrida an “an-khôra-ite, a postmodern desert father.” He elaborates: “The desert is a kind of placeless, displacing place— or the place for the displaced—that gets us past the politics of place and the wars over place, not a Heimat, but an open place, without borders or immigration laws, a kind of postgeographical meta-country” (1997: 154). Following Derrida into the deconstructive desert, Caputo finds “the traces of invisible tracks left in the desert: the messianic and khôra” (1997: 155). Jesus in this desert also makes invisible tracks, toward this God and Satan, demons and angels. What draws us to this desert?

The time of quarantine John Updike makes a grand pronouncement: “The original Gospels evince a flinty terseness, a refusal, or inability, to provide the close focus and cinematic highlighting that the modern mind expects” (2000: 331). Updike speaks here of Jim Crace’s novel,



Desert Tales: Mark and Last Days in the Desert

339

Quarantine, which is about Jesus’s forty-day wilderness experience and temptation. Jesus, and separately, a group of four pilgrims, enter the wilderness to fast and pray. Crace reimagines the gospels’ imagined stories of this uncanny, impossible feat. A human would not survive for forty days with no food or water. Crace then pauses these stories of Jesus in the wilderness and finds a trading caravan with an abusive merchant, Musa, and his pregnant wife, Miri. As the novel opens, Musa is sick with fever, and Mira sees the prospect of his death as liberating “good news.” The caravan continues on, and Miri is left to tend to her dying husband. As she prepares his grave, a band of five pilgrims arrive to do a forty-day quarantine in the caves, fasting all day and eating only at night. “This was the season of the lunatics: the first new moon of spring was summoning those men—for lunatics are mostly men. . . . Mad enough to think that forty days of discomfort could put their world in order” (1998a: 12). Three men and one woman with various ailments were together; a fifth “was bare-footed, and without a staff. No water-skin, or bag of clothes. No food. A slow, painstaking figure, made thin and watery by the rising, mirage heat” (1998a: 13). The fifth pilgrim moved like a leopard: “He was a traveller called Jesus, from the cooler, farming valleys in the north, a Galilean, and not one used to deprivations of this kind” (1998a: 21–22). Crace relates the child Jesus prayed so much that it concerned his parents. He eventually began to hear God’s call in everyday sounds. Optimistically, he had answered God’s call to go to the desert: “Creation was unfinished here. This was where the world was not complete. What better place to find his god at work” (1998a: 22). There is no mention of the baptism by John the Baptist. Nor does Jesus follow John’s example: “Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey” (Mk 1:6). Jesus goes barefoot and without any food or water, believing his God would provide. Before following God’s lead to find a cave in which to complete the forty-day deprivation, Jesus heads for the merchant Musa’s tent to get water and food. Musa can vaguely make out his presence in the tent: “A Jewish face, young and long and womanly. A Galilean face. A peasant face. A robber’s face, for sure, because the man had helped himself to water and was standing with their water-skin in his hand” (1998a: 25). Crace further describes Jesus: “He was as skittish, pale and narrow-shouldered as a goose. The neighbours called him Gally, a common nickname for a Galilean boy whose accent was strong, but ideal for Jesus. He was like a gally fly. He could not rest” (1998a: 72). As Jesus sets off toward his quarantine, he inadvertently heals Musa with a sprinkle of water and a common blessing for the sick, “So, here, be well again” (1998a: 26). When Musa awakens, he declares, “Here was a man who was in the mood to divine grand meanings in the simplest acts” (1998a: 128). Musa believes Jesus must be a healer and prophet, and seeks him out for what might become a profitable business. The other pilgrims also pick caves, but gather in the evening to break the fast and meet together. Jesus goes off alone and is unresponsive to the growing, concerned calls from the group. “He only understood that he should choose a way that was more punishing. The worse it was, the better it would be. That, surely, was the purpose of the wilderness. He knew the scriptures and the stories of the prophets. Triumph over hardship was their proof of holiness” (1998a: 71). In the cave Jesus “could tuck himself into the folds of God” (1998a: 72). “Why else had Jesus come into the wilderness? To

340

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

be the chosen one. To be eased to freedom from the devil’s grasp” (1998a: 150). Instead, Jesus finds that his God is mostly absent, or indiscernible from the devil; the desert may be the devil’s realm (1998a: 77), and angels and demons are indistinguishable in appearance (1998a: 112). Satan does not have Jesus’s face and voice, mirroring some inner monster. But Satan is a real monster. The abusive Musa serves as the tempter (1998a: 147–68), asking Jesus to come out of his cave to the group of pilgrims and heal them all. “Indeed the devil was living proof of god, for everything that god had made was weak and blemished and imperfect by design. .  .  . To deny the presence of the devil was to turn against the perfect blemishes of god” (1998a: 149).1 Like Anthony and the desert fathers after him, Jesus dreams of temptations, and considers the folly of his fast, but it is too late to change course because he is too weak to move and too stubborn to accept food and drink from the pilgrims (1998a: 154–64). “Quarantine had been the perfect preparation for his death” (1998a: 191). It is also the preparation for Musa’s invention of Jesus as healer, teacher, and eventually, savior. Like Paul and the gospel writers, Musa elaborates a kernel of experience. One difference is that Musa is an eyewitness. In the unreliability of the eyewitness testimony Crace is revealing the fictional roots of the gospel messages. Eventually basic biological facts intervene. Jesus dies after thirty days. There is no cowherd woman to bring him milk or middle way (as with the Buddha), or God to save him. Crace’s narrator describes this tragic ending: Jesus was a voyager, at last, between the heavens and the earth. There was a light, deep in the middle of the night. He tried to swim to it. He tried to fly. He held his hands up to the light. His hands were bluey-white like glass. The light passed through. The mountain shivered from afar. He felt the cold of nothing there. He heard the cold of no one there. No god, no gardens, just the wind. (1998a: 193)

Marta and Miri bury Jesus, and Marta discloses her dream, “I know his face from dreams. If it was dreaming,” in which Jesus touches her stomach and makes her pregnant with her husband’s child (1998a: 225). Jesus’s death makes Musa even more determined; he decides to trade in “the word” of Jesus and tell tales of how Jesus healed him (1998a: 242). Musa sees Jesus in a mirage (1998a: 243). From one sentence spoken by Jesus erupts the entire gospel message. Crace says that his initial intent in writing the novel was to eviscerate Christianity: It would be a simple matter. Take a venerated Bible story (Christ’s Judean fast), add a pinch of hard-nosed fact (nobody going without food and drink could survive for anything like forty days) and watch the scripture take a beating. Quarantine with Science its sword would kill Christ after only thirty days in the wilderness. There’d be no ministry or Crucifixion. The novel would erase two thousand years of Christianity. This would be my party-pooper of the millennium. . . . Jesus does not let me kill him off entirely. (1998b)

Crace cites his inspiration as a facility for mental health patients in Moseley, England, a result of “the Thatcherite money-snatching policy of ‘Care in Community,’ that



Desert Tales: Mark and Last Days in the Desert

341

produces a building of bleak cells and suspect care.” Crace relates his initial question, “how does a community of people, all living on the edge, secure some comfort, resolution and transcendence in what I considered to be a godless universe?” (2008). A priest commented that Crace had the Holy Ghost beside him as he wrote. Crace credits instead “the Imp of Storytelling, celebrated for its mischievousness, its cunning, and its generosity” (2008). Could it be also this Imp of Storytelling at Mark’s shoulder? Crace’s investigation of the wilderness story evokes the mysterious silence of Mark’s version: “Such an assaultive retelling, far from smoothing the rough spots in the Gospel account, raises new ones. Crace is a writer of hallucinatory skill and considerable cruelty” (Updike 2000: 331). Mark certainly has rough spots, many smoothed over or ignored by Luke and Matthew (although each have their own rough spots). Do Mark and Crace share a similar cruelty? Mark’s rough Jesus emerges an adult at John the Baptist’s river revival, only to have the Spirit immediately roughly place him in a rough place. Translations differ: the Spirit “drove him out into the wilderness” (NRSV, NEV, KJV: “driveth”), “sent him” (NIV, Phillips), “impelled him” (NASB), “made him” (Good News Translation), or “urged him” (The Living Bible). All these translations confirm the discomfort of Mark’s rough words. The Spirit tosses Jesus out. Crace has written an apocalyptic text; he places Jesus’s bones in Ezekiel’s dry valley. Crace leaves us with an undiscoverable grave and little trace of Jesus. Jasper links the desert experience to Mark’s empty tomb; “the tomb must remain empty . . . the hidden body . . . there is no signified, for there is nothing outside the signifier that is the Word, and the flesh made word” (sliding from Mark into John’s prologue) (2004: 51). Into Mark’s cave/tomb we peer, hopeful, knowing already of the emptiness. For Jasper, “The desert is insistently there, and yet it is also inside us and our imaginations, a no place, a utopia, the land to which we are led back, as their God led the erring Israelites back into the desert as a ‘door of hope’ in Hosea” (2004: xviii; Jasper’s emphasis). The desert is the place we have to go to start our quest for Jesus. But he has already left, moved on in the dream. For Jasper, “When Crace’s Jesus dies there is nothing, or almost nothing, that is dreamed in the desert—‘no god, no garden, just the wind’”(2004: 100–01; Crace 1998a: 93). Only the dream of a made-up messiah remains. “But in this place, in the desert, that is all you can do, and only then can it become a place of vision from which all else flows” (Jasper 2004: 175). Does Jesus invite us to follow him into the desert? We cannot access Jesus in the desert; he is off limits. Only desert tales (like the one from Musa or García) remain. And all the stories are made up.

Borderlands Although not directly on the border with Mexico, the Anza-Borrego Desert, Last Days in the Desert’s filming location, is close, between San Diego and the Salton Sea. The border lies just to the south, a mostly invisible line in the sand except for areas of border fence and border patrol. The proposed extension of the wall between the United States and Mexico (totaling seven hundred miles or about a third of the border distance) will also divide indigenous land (is not all of it indigenous land?). Gloria Anzaldúa explores the space of having a home in these borderlands:

342

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

The U.S.-Mexican border es una herida abierta [is an open wound] where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. . . . Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants. (1987: 3; Anzaldúa’s emphasis)

The border designates a line of power for Anzaldúa: “Do not enter, trespassers will be raped, maimed, strangled, gassed, shot. The only legitimate inhabitants are those in power, the whites and those who align themselves with power. Tension grips the inhabitants of the borderlands like a virus. Ambivalence and unrest reside there and death is no stranger” (1987: 3–4). Jesus in the multiple deserts is surrounded by borders in the form of fences and patrols (from the Roman army to the present). As Jesus travels in the gospels and beyond, he puts himself at risk. Miguel De La Torre puts Jesus’s crossings into the present US-Mexico border context: “And while most border crossers today do so as an act of desperation, Jesús, theologically speaking, chose to be a border crosser as an act of solidarity with the least of these. The biblical text reminds us that, although divine, Jesús became human, assuming the condition of the alienated” (2015: 33). Jesús is a migrant laborer, undocumented, an “illegal” (2015: 33–35). Like Yeshua in García’s film, Jesús is poor and homeless as he emerges from the desert. Jesus’s trek into the wilderness is into contested territory. The landscape was and is a space of contention and contestation. “Landscape” is a verb, “not an object to be seen or a text to be read, but as a process by which social and structural identities are formed” (Mitchell 1994a: 1). Landscape is also about power: “It is an instrument of cultural power, perhaps even an agent of power that is (or frequently represents itself as) independent of human intentions” (1994a: 1–2). In Mark’s landscape, wilderness is contested space, under continual control by imperial powers. In other words, there is no unified landscape, only multiple landscapes within. Mitchell observes landscape in its complex historical contexts: “The marks of imperial conquest in Israel/Palestine . . . would seem to be absolutely unavoidable. The face of the Holy Landscape is so scarred by war, excavation, and displacement that no illusion of innocent original nature can be sustained for a moment” (1994b: 27). No matter how much tourists idealize the Holy Landscape, with postcards of Bedouins on camels beside palm trees, with desert filling the frame, this vision collapses under the weight of its own Orientalism (1994b: 27). And the myth of the empty land does not apply to Mark’s desert tale of Jesus. He walks on scarred land. Jesus filmmakers search for this landscape, often substituting stand-ins for Israel/ Palestine: for example, Morocco (The Last Temptation of Christ 1988), Tunisia (Monty Python’s Life of Brian 1979), and the American Southwest (The Greatest Story Ever Told 1965; Last Days in the Desert).2 George Stevens chose Death Valley for Jesus’s forty-day ordeal.3 Pier Paolo Pasolini went on perhaps the most famous location search for Il vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 1964), documenting the search in Sopralluoghi in Palestina per il vangleo secondo Matteo (On Location in



Desert Tales: Mark and Last Days in the Desert

343

Palestine 1965). After driving around “Palestine,” Pasolini decided it was too modern. So he returned to southern Italy in the district of Basilicata and the capital Matera (as did Mel Gibson in The Passion of the Christ 2004). Italy is a stand in for ancient Palestine. Rodrigo García chose the Anza-Borrego Desert, a state park 100 miles east of San Diego, in Southern California. Nonetheless, what is represented onscreen is “Israel/Palestine,” at least an ancient mythic vision of it, no matter the location. The land is always occupied, and freedom is at stake. The desert is an ambiguous place of freedom, for gods and demons follow whoever enters. The desert is a dangerous place, so why not add layers to the dangers? Rebecca Solnit wanders into deserts and discovers their uncanny beauty and “spectacular desert light, the freedom of open space, and the stirring sight of thousands who shared our belief that nuclear bombs were the wrong instrument with which to write the history of the world. We bore a kind of bodily witness to our convictions, to the fierce beauty of the desert, and to the apocalypses being prepared nearby” (2001: 8). Solnit is speaking of (nuclear) weapons of mass destruction in the Nevada desert, but in some sense she is walking with the apocalyptic Jesus in this desert. What wild territory, of beginnings and endings. It is “the desert of the real” as Morpheus reveals to Neo in The Matrix (1999), exposing the grid imposed by their oppressors. In the desert of the real, past collides with the present, armies upon armies, wars upon wars, walls upon walls.

Conclusion: Desert, desertion, delirium, destruction, delight Mark invites us into his earthly dream. But he curtails his dream. He stands a safe distance away. We share Mark’s view. What do we see? Wild beasts and angels and Satan and Jesus as opaque mirages in the distant desert. These images become stories. Bachelard calls this “dreams of will” (2002: 2–3), as opposed to dreams of reverie or repose. Bachelard is working on two fronts at once: the extroverted dreams of will and the introverted dreams of repose: “The loveliest of images are often hotbeds of ambivalence” (2002: 7). The idealized image of Jesus holding steady and defeating Satan during his shamanistic training creates a model for moral competence. Further, images of immensity, like the desert, reflect depths of imagination within. The expanse brings “calm and unity; it opens up unlimited space” (Bachelard 1994: 197, following Baudelaire). But this desert dreamscape is also always under threat of division, with roads and checkpoints and walls. Bachelard examines further the dreamscape of desert: “In analyzing images of immensity, we should realize within ourselves the pure being of pure imagination. . . . Immensity is within ourselves,” connected with daydreaming (1994: 184). The vast desert expanses—Bachelard shows how this word (following Baudelaire) “brings calm and unity; it opens up unlimited space” (1994: 197). This desert dreamscape is under threat of division, with roads and checkpoints and walls. The artist Banksy has recently built a hotel in Bethlehem and named it “The Walled Off Hotel” because of its proximity to the security wall and watchtowers built by Israel in the West Bank.4 It opened March 11, 2017, to commemorate the 100-

344

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

year anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. Each room has original Banksy art, such as an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian protester pillow fighting, a masked sculpture enveloped in tear gas, and angels flying around drop-down airline oxygen masks. So what is the wall exactly? It divides the nation of Palestine from the state of Israel and restricts movement between the two for citizens of both sides. Depending on who you talk to it is either a vital security measure or an instrument of apartheid. Its route is highly controversial and it has a dramatic impact on the daily lives of a lot of people. The one thing beyond dispute is that everything here is under dispute. Adjacent to the hotel is a “Wal*Mart”: “the graffiti supplies store which stocks everything you need to make your mark and offers expert advice and guidance.” Art provides necessary social and political commentary, and guests can make their own statements on the wall. Bansky keeps returning to this wall dividing Israel and the West Bank: “This place is the center of the universe—every time God comes to earth it seems to happen near here.” As Bansky illustrates, the landscape is ideological, open always to re-interpretation. Elbit Systems, the Israeli contractor for this wall that is Banksy’s canvas, has recently been awarded a $145 million contract with the US Department of Homeland Security to build the additional border wall between the United States and Mexico. The Trump administration sees the Israeli wall as a proven security wall, although there is no proof for this declaration. There are mentions of concrete, barbed wire, and even an electric fence to shock any crossers. In this journey into Mark’s temptation narrative I have been wandering in deserts in different locations: 1) in Palestine and 2) in California. Were Jesus to wander deserts today, what would he encounter: 1) security wall, Israeli Defense troops, wild beasts, hunger, thirst; 2) security wall, US Border Patrols, wild beasts, hunger, thirst, detention, deportation? In Last Days in the Desert, when Yeshua ends his wilderness time, he sees Jerusalem in the distance. Dirty and smelly, undocumented and bearing a wild message from a wild landscape and the wild prophets before him, Yeshua is at the moment of his journey into the rest of his story. In today’s world he would be more than suspect, and great expense and violence would be put forth to forever relegate him to the margins and to bar him entrance to paradise.

Notes 1 David Jasper claims Pasolini’s Satan is a “Musa,” “a grubby, ordinary man who catches people foolish enough to travel in desolation at their weakest and most dependent” (2004: 102). 2 Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), for example, uses Israel as its location. 3 Stevens justifies his location: “I wanted to get an effect of grandeur as a background to Christ, and none of the Holy Land areas shape up with the excitement of the American southwest. I know that Colorado is not the Jordan, nor is Southern Utah Palestine. But our intention is to romanticize the area, and it can be done better here” (cited in “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” n.d.). 4 This information is available at the hotel’s homepage (Banksy n.d.). Click on the shop link to see the Wal*Mart graffiti.



Desert Tales: Mark and Last Days in the Desert

345

Works cited Anzaldúa, Gloria (1987), Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, San Francisco: Aunt Lute. Bachelard, Gaston (1994), The Poetics of Space, trans. John R. Silgoe, Boston: Beacon. Bachelard, Gaston (2002), Earth and Reveries of Will: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter, trans. Kenneth Haltman, Dallas: Dallas Institute. Bachelard, Gaston (2011), Earth and Reveries on Repose: An Essay on Images of Interiority, trans. Mary McAllester Jones, Dallas: Dallas Institute. Banksy (n.d.), “The Walled Off Hotel.” Available online: http://banksy.co.uk/index.html (accessed March 6, 2017). Branch, Lori (2003), “The Desert in the Desert: Faith and the Aporias of Law and Knowledge in Derrida and the Sayings of the Desert Fathers,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 71 (4): 811–33. Caputo, John D. (1997), The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Crace, Jim (1998a), Quarantine, New York: Picador. Crace, Jim (1998b), “Crace on Quarantine.” Available online: http://www.jim-crace.com/ Crace_Q_intro.htm (accessed March 7, 2017). Crace, Jim (2008), “Finding Jesus,” The Guardian, March 21. Available online: https:// www.theguardian.com/books/2008/mar/22/featuresreviews.guardianreview7 (accessed March 21, 2017). De La Torre, Miguel A. (2015), The Politics of Jesús: A Hispanic Political Theology, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Derrida, Jacques (1998), “Faith and Knowledge: Two Sources of Religion at the Limits of Reason Alone,” in Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo (eds.), Religion, 1–78, trans. David Webb, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Frye, Northrop (2005), “The Return to Eden: Five Essays on Milton’s Epics,” in Angela Esterhammer (ed.), Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake, 35–131, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (n.d.). Available online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ The_Greatest_Story_Ever_Told (accessed March 21, 2017). Harpham, Geoffrey G. (1987), The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jasper, David (2004), The Sacred Desert: Religion, Literature, and the Arts, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Milton, John (1671). “Paradise Regained.” Available online: http://www.gutenberg.org/ cache/epub/58/pg58-images.html (accessed March 21, 2017). Mitchell, W. J. T. (1994a), “Introduction,” in W. J. T. Mitchell (ed.), Landscape and Power, 1–4, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mitchell, W. J. T. (1994b), “Imperial Landscape,” in W. J. T. Mitchell (ed.), Landscape and Power, 5–34, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Solnit, Rebecca (2001), Wanderlust: A History of Walking, London: Verso. Updike, John (2000), “Stones into Bread,” in John Updike, More Matters: Essays and Criticism, 325–31, New York: Random House. Welland, Michael (2015), The Desert: Lands of Lost Borders, London: Reaktion. Wilken, Robert L. (1992), The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought, New Haven: Yale University Press.

28

A Revolutionary Passion Film: Giovanni Columbu’s Su Re (The King) Lloyd Baugh

Introduction Among the earliest films produced were brief but popular works representing the passion  of Jesus. These primitive passions consist mostly of a series of static representations of individual scenes from the “Way of the Cross” (Via Crucis), staged in front of a camera. Filmed in black and white and without sound, the scenes are characterized by rudimentary mise-en-scène, minimal decor and props, little interaction among the characters, and no movement of the camera. As the gospel film tradition progresses, this changes. However, in spite of the advent of elaborate sets, both natural and constructed, color, dialogue and music, dynamic photography and editing, one aspect remains constant: the passion narrative dominates as the pezzo forte of each of these films. So powerful and popular is this narrative that a subgenre develops within the gospel film tradition: the passion film, feature length works that represent the last days of Jesus’s life, such as Golgotha (1935), The Passion of the Christ (2004), and The Passion (2008). The most recent of these films is Su Re (The King) (2012, released in Italy 2013), an Italian/Sardinian production of Giovanni Columbu. A radical departure from the passion film tradition, Su Re is an independent, experimental work; one that confuses, angers, saddens, moves deeply, and finally surprises with joy and hope. Su Re challenges viewers to put aside their expectations of a gospel/passion film, to engage in an active dialogue with this difficult, even shocking text, to find the courage to enter its dark and often confusing ambiguities, and to struggle to understand the text and creatively to construct its meaning and significance. Giovanni Columbu is little known outside of Italy.1 Though he has only one other feature film to his credit (Arcipelaghi 2001), Columbu is the auteur of Su Re, and the film is a very personal work: Columbu is the writer, producer, and director of Su Re; and he is responsible for the editing, the choice of the music, and much of the photography. In most of his strategic choices, Columbu deliberately violates most of the traditional dimensions of gospel/passion films. This radical shift can be identified  in  the film’s sources; in its content, style, and form; in its brevity; in its choice of non-professional



A Revolutionary Passion Film

347

actors; and in its minimalist sound track. Essential to an appreciation of Su Re as uniquely different from the other gospel films are three considerations: the prophetic power of Isaiah’s concept of the Suffering Servant of Yahweh (Isaiah 53), which determines the character of the film’s Jesus; the reality of the gospel oral tradition, which determines the film’s narrative structure and content; and the essential holy mystery at the core of who Jesus is, and of what he experiences in his passion and resurrection, a dimension studiously avoided or unsuccessfully evoked by all but a few gospel films.2

Jesus as the Suffering Servant of Yahweh Perhaps the greatest challenge encountered by directors making a gospel film is their operative concept of Jesus and consequently the actor they choose to play him. Their responses to these challenges are played out against the complex background of the more than 130 gospel films produced since 1895, many of which are extant. Columbu’s film is a strong reaction against this tradition: Su Re’s Jesus is a revolutionary break with the Hollywood (and other)3 Saviors. Columbu’s fundamental concept for his Jesus is fluid, and it moves among several poles, the first of which is that of Jesus as the enigmatic Suffering Servant of Yahweh: “For he grew up before him . . . like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others” (Isa. 53:2-3 NIV).4 The director subverts the traditional film portrait, focused on “external characteristics, tied to physical aspects, to beauty” (Zaccagnini 2013; see Graybill), as his choice of Fiorenzo Mattu for the role of Jesus makes clear.5 Neither tall and handsome, nor “sexy”/attractive,6 this Jesus shocks, even repels at first, just as the Suffering Servant of Isaiah repels. Mattu, stocky, heavy set, and copiously hirsute, offers his Jesus no physical grace at all. Given his round bulldog face, framed by thick black hair and beard, with bulging, strabismic eyes, the viewer is not overly surprised to see this brutish man led around by a belt tight around his neck. Mattu’s Jesus is mostly silent, unusual for a film portrait of Jesus, and the few times he does speak, his voice is raspy and mumbling, so that often one cannot make out what he is saying. This Jesus evinces not even human strength and resolve. He seems weak, undetermined, passively subject to others’ violent whims, with little consciousness of his divine mission of salvation. He demonstrates no obvious moral authority and spiritual power, and his references to God and to having an intimate relationship with God are, at the very most, tenuous. In his absence from the screen for a good part of the film—something quite unheard of in the tradition—Columbu accentuates this odd Jesus’s lack of significance, as does the unusual manner in which Columbu seldom gives him visual importance in the mise-en-scène of many group compositions: for example, in Gethsemane, during his appearances before Caiaphas and Pilate, and on the way to Calvary. Regarding Jesus’s relationships with others, Columbu makes him an elusive, solitary character, as is Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. When Jesus is seen with his disciples, there

348

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

is little conversation, warmth, or intimacy between them—not even with Peter and John—but rather an awkward distance and even, perhaps, fear. More significantly, in contrast with many gospel films in which Jesus enjoys powerful, if extra-biblical, intimacy with his mother—Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings (1961) and Gibson’s Passion are extreme examples—nowhere in Su Re does Columbu suggest a close rapport between Jesus and Mary: they never meet; they never speak; they never even have eye-contact.

Evocation of the oral tradition Another critical dimension of Su Re, which distinguishes it radically from all the other gospel films, is that it represents the reality of Jesus and his passion not as they are proclaimed in the canonical gospels, but rather as they might have been transmitted through the developing oral tradition, “before the composition of the gospels” (Zordan 2013: 76). Though most of the gospel and passion films may appear to be based on the gospel, in the tradition there are a number of films whose primary source is not, in fact, the gospel.7 Then there are films based on the canonical gospels, but out of which the directors develop a smooth narrative harmony, editing out their differences in content, tone, and style. A dramatic exception to this harmonizing is Pasolini’s powerful, authoritative Il vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 1964), which uses only Matthew’s gospel in its script.8 Su Re is a revolutionary exception to these other approaches for several reasons. First, Columbu references all four of the gospels, a decision he announces in the film’s opening with bold white letters on a black background, “from the gospels of Matthew Mark Luke John,” something no other gospel film does. Second, and more importantly, Columbu handles the gospels in a most unconventional way, that is, by not blending them into an integrated harmony in which the distinctness of each gospel disappears, but rather by allowing the differences among them to show through. Further, he includes no extra-biblical material, neither from apocryphal texts nor from fictional sources. In keeping with Columbu’s intention to evoke the oral tradition’s period and style, the director regularly repeats scenes/episodes, but not in succession and each slightly different from the others. This original technique deliberately calls attention to itself. Then in numerous episodes, Su Re’s narrative is longer and more complex than the corresponding gospel text(s), in both actions and dialogue: the suicide of Judas, for example, is much elaborated, as is the scene of the “blood curse” (Mt. 27:25). Seldom is the film’s dialogue taken verbatim from a gospel, and much of the time the dialogue segments protract and elaborate gospel expressions. For example, when Jesus appears before the priests, the questioning of witnesses is much extended, as is the dialogue of the scene of Peter’s denial. Columbu is proposing that these longer and more complex sections of dialogue—they are always the words of characters other than Jesus—are later edited down during the redaction phase of the gospels. Furthermore, the order in which Columbu edits the episodes/scenes together is not chronological, again suggesting strands of the oral tradition. In the entire film, names



A Revolutionary Passion Film

349

of characters, even significant ones like Pilate, Caiaphas, Judas, are not used; thus the identity and function of people and places are neither clearly nor directly identified. Not once is Jesus called “Lord,”9 a title that the gospels attribute to Jesus in light of the resurrection: the absence of this Christological title strongly suggests the primitive, pre-gospel period. Further, the film does not offer any sense of the situation of the specific primitive Christian community for which each of the gospels is intended. This subtlety is generated later by the redactors. Perhaps most importantly, Su Re does not suggest any of the distinct theological/ spiritual structures that give to each gospel a distinctive theological thrust. In brief, most biblical scholars agree that Matthew is intended for a Jewish audience, with an apologetic intent, and for Jewish Christians, to encourage them to be strong in their new beliefs; Mark is written for Christians under persecution, perhaps in Rome; Luke is intended for a wider, non-Jewish audience, Greek and other, and develops an understanding of Jesus as the perfect human being; John is a late and highly theological text that insists on Jesus as divine.10 Su Re has none of these distinctions.

The influence of a kindred spirit Though at first glance, Su Re seems to be sui generis, Columbu speaks openly about his debt to Pasolini and his admiration for Il vangelo secondo Matteo. There are many connections. For example, Pasolini is well known for his fiercely uncompromising approach to filmmaking and Columbu’s approach is very similar. Pasolini, a man of deep social commitment, shows a prophetic respect for the local cultures in which he makes Il vangelo: he employs many local people, often poor and simple, as actors, and he does nothing to alter their accents and dialects. Columbu evinces the same profound respect for his actors, turning their idiosyncrasies to his film’s advantage. In Il vangelo, Pasolini favors close-up shots of his actors/characters’ faces, which become expressive of tones that he wants to confer to particular moments of his film. Columbu does the same. Pasolini deliberately and counter culturally makes his film in black and white, and favors a hand-held camera and subjective shots. The soundtrack of Il vangelo is powerful and countercultural—a Congolese “Gloria in Excelsis Deo,” the music of Prokofiev and Bach, and American Blues music—but Pasolini also provides powerful moments of meditative silence, subtly punctuated by the pure sounds of nature. The most powerful example of this is his remarkable annunciation scene. On both of these counts, Columbu learns well from his master. Finally, Pasolini knew that his revolutionary film would disturb the cultural and political establishment of 1960s Italy, as indeed it did—and Columbu was very much aware that his independent, dramatically countercultural film would not be well received in twenty-first century Italy. Perhaps the point at which Pasolini’s influence on Columbu is most clear is in their fierce, uncompromising opposition to the stereotypical representation of Jesus in most gospel films: Pasolini, with his angry, prophetic Jesus, is reacting against the bland Jesus of the Hollywood spectaculars of the 1960s; Columbu, with his mysterious, almost mute “Suffering Servant” Jesus, is deliberately rejecting the sanitized, inoffensive Jesus

350

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

of Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth (1977) and the popular and “sexy/romantic” portraits of Jesus in many more recent gospel films.

The violence of the passion Since the release of Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, with its sado-masochistic exaggeration of the physical violence visited on Jesus during the passion, much attention has been focused on the manner in which Jesus’s suffering is represented in the gospel.11 Crucifixion, to be sure, is a horrific way to die. The physical agony can last many hours, sometimes days, and the victim usually dies slowly from asphyxiation. Curiously, however, the gospels’ descriptions are quite laconic: in Matthew, seven verses (26:67-68; 27:26, 28-31); in Mark, five (14:65; 15:15b, 17, 19); in Luke, four (22:63-65; 23:11); and in John, three (19:1-3). The references to Jesus’s scourging are quite sketchy: in Matthew, half a verse (27:26b); in Mark, half a verse (15:15b); in Luke, the scourging is not mentioned; in John, one verse (19:1). In dramatic contrast to Gibson, Scorsese, and most of the other gospel films, Columbu attenuates the violence imposed on Jesus, never permitting it to become bloody and overpowering to the senses. He represents Jesus’s physical pain not through close-up shots and screams, but through Jesus’s silence, his facial expressions, and his stumbling walk. Columbu clearly suggests Jesus’s spiritual confusion and sense of abandonment and, in contrast to many gospel films, he offers the viewer space to appreciate how Jesus feels disoriented, powerless, and terribly alone in this ordeal. Columbu demonstrates restraint in representing the passion’s violence, employing no high-powered digital effects, very few close-ups, no music, and a bare minimum of dialogue and camera movement. For the insults to, and the beating of Jesus, a scene abbreviated to one-and-a-half minutes, Columbu uses the classical technique of ellipsis, having the soldiers/thugs lead Jesus into a space off-screen, and having the viewer experience the violence through the reactions of the crowd observing the scene at a distance. The viewer overhears some of the thugs’ insults and taunts and, at the center of the visual attention, Columbu situates an old woman, who at first smiles as she watches the grisly spectacle, commenting strangely, “Is it a game?” Within a few seconds, her smile becomes a mask of horror, as someone off-screen murmurs, “So much blood everywhere.” For the scourging scene, Columbu again uses ellipsis: here, too, Jesus is kept off-screen and the camera focuses on the crowd, on a thug as he strikes Jesus with a long piece of thick rope,12 and—in a most original touch—on an old man behind the thug who, with empty hands, mimics the movements of the thug a split-second later. This unusual effect is galvanizing; the scene, representing only nine stripes of the rope, lasts less than two minutes.

Questions of style and technique Extradiegetical elements13 are a determinating dimension of Su Re’s meaning and impact. Viewers familiar with Marshall McLuhan’s aphorism, “The medium is the



A Revolutionary Passion Film

351

message/massage” (McLuhan and Fiore 1967), are struck by the dramatic power of Su Re’s form and style; perceptive, patient viewers appreciate how much these elements have a decisive impact on their construction of the film’s meaning.14 A radically atypical film, it is unorthodox technically, difficult to view, more difficult to comprehend and appreciate, rather like Jesus’s actual passion must have been. Clearly a low-budget, independent film, Su Re offers a dramatically new and effective way to experience Jesus’s passion. Most gospel films have a linear narrative structure, like the gospels themselves, though sometimes their directors punctuate that forward moving linearity with flashbacks, to represent either events in the past or psychological justification for some gesture or word of Jesus. In Su Re, Columbu constantly violates linearity between shots or scenes, giving his narrative a back-and-forth structure and movement, deliberately disturbing and disorienting the viewer.15 Columbu’s editing is deliberately bumpy, imprecise—a quality of details in the oral tradition—at times, the timing is off; at times, the dialogue in a scene is overly repetitive;16 and at times, images remain on the screen longer than textbook editing would permit. In stark contrast to the accepted style of gospel films, the iconoclastic Columbu lights his film in subdued dark colors, that give the effect of black and white, but without the rich, sharp distinctions of film noir, and that generate a feeling of uncertainty. Regularly, Columbu’s compositions seem imprecise, obliging the viewer to search for the point of importance, and during the entire film, he uses a hand-held camera, making every frame unsteady, often shaky, which confers a nervous, provisional quality to the images and their meaning. Given these “bold, revolutionary choices,” viewers sense they watch raw reality; they are denied a “relaxed and ‘ecstatic’ vision” (Zordan 2013) and provoked to search for, and construct, the film’s meaning. Su Re is the gospel film with the least artificial and least dense soundtrack. Columbu features no music until the film’s conclusion and then he keeps it brief and in the background. Artificial sounds are effectively replaced by natural sounds: wind, footsteps, hooves of horses, birds calling, crackling bonfires, and much subdued thunder and earthquake. None of these sounds is exaggerated, none is violent, none is overpowering. The film’s most unexpected sound is that of Jesus’s belabored breathing during the climb to Calvary and as he is dying on the cross: the effect is eerie. A further significant element of Su Re’s soundtrack is Columbu’s unorthodox and risky decision to make the film in the Sardinian language.17 The unfamiliar sound of the dialogue gives Su Re not only a valuable tone of authenticity in the Sardinian setting, but also the convincing flavor of an ancient time and culture—perhaps what Gibson hoped to gain by filming/dubbing his The Passion of the Christ in Latin and Aramaic. Different from most Jesus film directors, Columbu has no intention of recreating first-century Palestine: he sets his film in an abstract, timeless period—probably the only time this has been done in the gospel film tradition—and in the savage mountains of the Barbagia in central Sardinia: high cliffs, slopes hindered by sharp rocks and massive boulders and swept by strong winds, low, menacing, dark clouds, and thick, grey fog. In these hostile places, and for his interiors, Columbu uses the dark expressionistic ruins of churches and abandoned cloisters that serve as the palaces of Caiaphas and Pilate, but without ever identifying them directly. The costumes are

352

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

stylized, mostly black, often sinister, and in the dark settings in which characters move, it is not always easy to distinguish who is who, to specify the settings and the historic period. Again, in clear contrast to most gospel films, Su Re features non-professional actors, recruited locally: some are friends of Columbu, some are shepherds who live and work on the mountains pictured in the film, and a goodly number are patients from a local psychiatric clinic. Columbu encourages them to improvise, and the result is uniquely effective: often the words are totally unexpected but authentic; often the gestures are eccentric, but real; and often the movements are unpredictable but natural. Above all, the faces of Columbu’s actors/characters are convincing icons of anger and fear, of pain, confusion, and compassion. In their few lines, or in their silence, they succeed, where Hollywood stars could not, at representing the dark mystery of hate, of violence, of suffering, and above all, the ultimate mystery of dying.

Jesus and his passion as mystery A yet further dimension of Su Re makes it stand out as a radically different filmic treatment of Jesus’s passion: its evocation of mystery in the person of Jesus and in his suffering, death, and resurrection, as suggested in the gospels. For most of the directors of gospel films, the dimension of mystery in the person of Jesus is intimidating, and no real effort is made to respect it. The resulting Jesus usually is well under the control of the director and the viewer, easily understood, familiar, proposing no serious questions, offering a film experience more sentimental than sacred, and featuring a bland, domesticated Jesus rather than a provocative manifestation of holy mystery. Columbu goes in a new direction, one much closer to biblical and theological representations, and to the transcendent reality they point to. The Jesus of Su Re, as previously noted, is unique in the tradition. Reflecting the Suffering Servant, he is an enigmatic scandal, a radical paradox, an impossible Messiah, an unthinkable Son of God. As the Jesus of the oral tradition, he remains a mysterious, elusive figure who is just beginning to take form, his suffering and death still unclear, and available only through a confusing series of disconnected images. Yet this Jesus is informed, somehow, by the grace of the resurrection that, in fact, is the origin and the catalyst of the oral tradition. In clear contrast to the gospel film tradition, Columbu does a number of things to suggest the mystery in/of Jesus. Perhaps the most evident of these is that he puts Jesus onscreen very much less than is usual. Further, Columbu very seldom shows Jesus’s entire face in medium or close-up shots, he often keeps him on the extreme edges of the frame, and he sometimes has the camera “lose” Jesus as he moves out of the frame.18 In the Last Supper scene, Columbu shoots Jesus predominantly from behind, a technique he operates with variations a number of other times. During the Gethsemane scene, Columbu photographs Jesus in profile and from a long distance— one can barely make out his face—and during the climb to Calvary, he keeps Jesus hidden behind the cross. Through these photographic techniques, and by avoiding having Jesus speak or gesture dramatically, or be accompanied by dramatic music,



A Revolutionary Passion Film

353

Columbu avoids giving Jesus any artfully generated dramatic tone or significance.19 As mentioned earlier, an aural dimension of Su Re that evokes mysterious ancient times is the Sardinian dialogue. A number of Italian students and friends—who do not know the Sardinean language—have commented that when they hear Jesus speaking Sardinian, the effect is very particular, as if, somehow, “there is an ancient mystery—un mistero antico—rooted in his person.” Rather than a “sexy,” powerful, or dominant Jesus—there is no mystery in that— Columbu proposes a quiet, intense one20 and he explains: “The prerogatives of every great person loved and recognized as a leader, have nothing to do with exterior looks. Nor is it only a question of interior or intellectual qualities. It is a question of intensity.”21 As paradoxical as Columbu’s Jesus is, the principle quality that distinguishes him as the Jesus of the gospel, is his intensity, something that Columbu portrays throughout the film, and that he makes dramatically clear in several ways. In dialogue with his disciples, Jesus sometimes makes long pauses, for example, in the scene after his announcement of his betrayal, when the disciples respond with a belabored chorus of “Is it I?” When Jesus finally answers, “It is the one who is eating with me,” his intensity and the power of his presence is undeniable. When he appears before Pilate, an enigmatic Jesus does not reply to his questions. His silence is powerful and pregnant, full of tension, and clearly Pilate senses Jesus’s significance, and perhaps even his identity. In contrast, when Caiaphas asks Jesus, “Are you the Messiah?” Columbu focuses his camera on Jesus’s face, and exceptionally allows it to linger there for a dramatic five seconds, making the viewer wonder how he will answer, until Jesus says calmly, quietly, “I am.” No more than this, a Jesus at the height of his powers and in a moment of dramatic self-consciousness. In the Gethsemane scene, Jesus is photographed in discrete longshots; one cannot see his face clearly and no sweat “like drops of blood” (Lk. 22:44) is visible. Yet by the intense manner in which he stands, upright and, in one shot, stiffly leaning back with his face turned upward as he says, “God,” one feels the intensity of his terrible solitude and of the silence of God that he is experiencing. At one moment during the Last Supper scene, Columbu provides a rare balanced, full-face shot of Jesus, as he holds the bread and says with quiet authority and intensity, “This is my body. Eat of it all of you,” and then with the cup, “This is my blood, shed for you.” The effect is electrifying: Columbu, for a moment, is suggesting that the pre-gospel oral tradition offers tantalizing glimpses of the mystery of Jesus as the Messiah of the gospel and of the canonical tradition.

The mystery of the resurrection Su Re’s brilliant evocation of the resurrection is the most prophetically original of the gospel film tradition, and it gives a powerful charge of mystery to that event.22 The short scene, a single shot lasting thirteen seconds, seems simple: three children, a boy and two girls, walk quickly away from the camera and up a mountainside; it is early morning, a cloudless sky brilliantly lit by the rising sun. Three times, the children look nervously back at the camera.

354

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

In fact, the scene is highly complex and significant. These children have not appeared before in the film and their hurried movement upward, in contrast to the stasis of the preceding scene, in the dark tomb as Jesus’s body is laid to rest, surprises; the bright sky, in sharp contrast to the dark, closed spaces of much of the film, relieves; the camera point of view, from the sepulcher, mystifies; and the scene’s extreme brevity disturbs the viewer. That the scene is shown only one time gives it a particularly definitive status: Columbu is suggesting that during the period of the oral tradition, the resurrection of Jesus as the Christ, the source of that tradition, has normative, definitive value.23 This unusual and “enigmatic” (Biolchini 2013) resurrection scene breaks with, and stands outside of, the film’s narrative, almost as if that narrative could not contain it, as if the resurrection is more definitive than this, or any other, narrative. Columbu, after presenting all but one piece of the puzzle that is the oral tradition, now offers an exhilarating glimpse of the missing and central piece that completes the picture, that gives final meaning to all the tentative, provisory pieces: the final piece is definitive, yet inscrutable mystery (for a more thorough treatment, see Baugh 2014). In the children’s nervous agitation, as they move away and look back toward the sepulcher, Columbu suggests the women’s fear and wonder at the sepulcher. He is also suggesting the resurrection’s mysterium tremendum et fascinosum (a phrase coined by Otto [1917] 1950), as the witnesses experience both fear and irresistible fascination before the mystery of the Christ risen.24 From the preceding lugubrious scene in the dark, shadowy sepulcher, in which one hears a slight reworking of Isa. 53:11, “After so much suffering, He returns to shine in splendor, and with Him, the entire world,” the director cuts sharply to the wide-open spaces outside the sepulcher and to the brilliant sunlight seldom seen during the film, thus associating Isaiah’s allusion to the resurrection to this mystery filled scene. A subtle piece of sacred music, Arvo Pärt’s Nunc dimittis,25 a reference to Simeon’s prayer upon receiving Jesus as a child in the Temple, strengthens these several indirect references to the resurrection. Simeon’s words are: “Sovereign Lord . . . my eyes have seen your salvation . . . a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel (Lk. 2:29-32 NIV). Here Columbu applies the words meant for the child Jesus, to Jesus Christ, himself that salvation and light, in his resurrection.26 After seventyfive minutes of conspicuous musical silence, Pärt’s short composition lifts one’s spirit before the glorious mystery of Jesus Christ risen.

Conclusion Many Christians have domesticated the gospel text, reducing its challenging kerygma, meaning, and mystery to an inoffensive, saccharine, popular narrative that they enjoy hearing in church on Sunday and other occasions, but that has little effect on their lives other than to justify their behavior and make them feel good. Unfortunately, much popular Christian “art” reflects this trend, as is abundantly suggested by the popular, sentimental images of biblical and often non-biblical scenes in Christmas and Easter posters and greeting cards. The same may be said of the representations of Jesus and



A Revolutionary Passion Film

355

of gospel episodes in many of the so-called inspirational religious films produced for cinema and television and then recycled annually for these feasts. Redemption is painlessly experienced in two hours or less, on larger-than-life screens, possibly projected in three or four dimensions, modulated by “stirring spiritual” music, and “miraculous” digital special effects, and accompanied by popcorn, tacos, and mostly sentimental tears. In Su Re, Giovanni Columbu radicalizes the gospel/passion film genre, and thus transforms the mass-mediated gospel message. An unusual, challenging film, Su Re disturbs, asks difficult questions, and offers few clear answers. It proposes dark, enigmatic images, difficult to decipher, in a silence that cries out to be filled. It obliges the serious viewer to participate actively, to search for meaning, and to struggle with unanswered questions. It invites the viewer bravely to make a leap of faith into the darkness, in the hope of finding light. Su Re represents, as no other gospel film, the profound mystery announced by the Christian kerygma, the unfathomable mystery of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Notes 1 An architect by education, and a recognized painter and poet, he was born in 1949 in Nuoro, Sardinia. 2 Il vangelo secondo Matteo and The Passion successfully evoke the dimension of mystery in Jesus. 3 A number of the most important, valid gospel films are not Hollywood productions: Golgotha, Il vangelo, Il messia (1975), Jezile (Son of Man 2006), and The Passion. 4 Only one other gospel film represents Jesus as the Suffering Servant, Pasolini’s La ricotta (1962). La ricotta proposes a metaphor of Jesus in his passion in a ridiculous, poor man, “Stracci” [rags]. After Stracci, playing the role of the good thief in a passion film, literally dies on a cross, an onlooker speaks of him as a povero Cristo [poor Christ], a common Italian expression for someone who has had a very difficult, tragic life and who deserves sympathy. Curiously, despite his farcical, even absurd quality, Stracci is the only person in Pasolini’s film who expresses any sense of authentic holiness. 5 Columbu originally cast Mattu, who plays a very convincing thug/killer in Arcipelaghi, as “Judas” in Su Re, but changed his mind and asked Mattu to play “Jesus.” 6 CNN journalist, Carol Costello, raised questions about the propriety of the “sexy Jesus” played by Diogo Morgado, a 6’ 2” Portuguese actor and former fashion model whose six-pack abs are repeatedly highlighted in the Son of God (2014) (Rothman 2014; Costello 2014). Other film Jesuses generally deemed “sexy” include Jeffrey Hunter (King of Kings), Bruce Marchiano (The Visual Bible: Matthew 1993), Jeremy Sisto (Jesus 1999), Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ), and Joseph Mawle (The Passion). 7 The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and The Passion of the Christ are only indirectly based on the gospels. They rely respectively on Oursler’s novel (1949), Kazantzakis’s novel ([1955] 1960), and the bizarre, nonauthoritative “meditations” of an eighteenth-century German Augustinian nun/ mystic, Anne Catherine Emmerich, reported by Clemens Brentano ([1833] 1904).

356

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

8 In recent years, several films have been produced for church and devotional use, which transliterate the entire texts of individual gospels: for example, The Visual Bible: The Gospel of John (2003), The Gospel of John (2014), The Gospel of Mark (2015), and The Gospel of Luke (2015). 9 After Jesus’s announcement of the upcoming betrayal, Matthew’s disciples (and then Judas) ask, “Surely you don’t mean me, Lord?” (26:22, 25 NIV). Columbu suppresses the title but repeats the disciples’ question eight times. 10 This issue deserves more attention than it can be given here. See Jackson (n.d.). 11 Some Muslim countries banned or severely curtailed the distribution of The Passion of the Christ precisely because the film depicted such shocking disrespect and extreme violence being inflicted on Jesus, one of their prophets. 12 The rope is a significant shift away from the whips, “cats of nine-tails,” typical of most of the gospel/passion films. 13 This includes actors, the script, sets, theme music added during postproduction, photography, and editing. Intradiegetical elements are dimensions that belong within the narrative, “the story,” or diegesis: characters, events, places, and words and sounds created by characters. 14 In an eccentric, experimental work like Su Re, the extradiegetical dimensions are more noticeable than in a typical narrative film. On viewing Su Re, one of my graduate students from France commented, “I wonder what a gospel film made by Jean-Paul Godard might look like.” A very perceptive point. I suggested that she screen Godard’s Je vous salue, Marie (1985). 15 Compare the effect of finding two versions of the same event in one of the canonical gospels (for example, Mk 6:30-44 and 8:1-9; and Mt. 15:29-38 and 14:13-21). 16 Some of these are annoying to the viewer: the long litany of “Is it I, Lord?” queries during the Last Supper; the extended and repetitive questions and answers during the hearing before Caiaphas; the extended denials of Jesus by Peter; and the dramatic and repetitive disavowals of Peter on Calvary later. The last is extra-biblical. 17 Though some critics, and many viewers—including Italians—refer to the Sardinian “dialect,” “il sardo” is a language, ancient and predating Italian. Columbu originally intended to release the film without subtitles, but was persuaded to subtitle it in Italian. 18 Columbu’s technique here is similar to the way Dreyer often “loses” his protagonist by having her “slip” beyond the edges of the frame in La Passion de Jeanne D’Arc (1928). Columbu confirms the influence Dreyer has had on him. 19 Contrast particularly the formal, distant Jesus played by Max von Sydow in The Greatest Story Ever Told. 20 As in 1 Kings 19, the presence of God in Jesus is revealed not in wind, storm, thunder, and earthquake, but in silence and a gentle breeze. 21 Quoted in Zaccagnini (2013). Columbu continues: “That is why I chose Fiorenzo Mattu, and why I shifted so far away from the physical attributes to which we are accustomed.” 22 The resurrection is not a concrete, material, time-bound event. It transcends the limited human category of event and breaks into the transcendent reality to which the mysterious post-resurrection scenes in the gospels point. 23 If the film for the most part reflects pre-gospel memories (or oral traditions), this moment is a tantalizing glimpse, as is the Last Supper scene, of the emerging post-oral, pre-canonical gospel texts. 24 The gospels attribute a variety of responses to the witnesses of the resurrection appearances/message (see Mt. 28:8; Mk 16:8; Lk. 24:5).



A Revolutionary Passion Film

357

25 Pärt, a native of Estonia, creates sacred music in an idiosyncratic, minimalist style with strong tones of classical Gregorian chant. 26 Some scholars maintain that Simeon’s canticle is shaped retroactively by reflection on the resurrection.

Works cited Baugh, Lloyd (2014), “Una Passione enigmatica: Su Re nella tradizione e oltre la tradizione,” Studia Patavina, 61:1–20. Biolchini, Vito (2013), “Anche i sardi hanno ucciso Gesù. Lo sconcertante e potente Su Re di Giovanni Columbu,” Vitobiolchini.it, March 23. Available online: http://www. vitobiolchini.it/2013/03/23/anche-i-sardi-hanno-ucciso-gesu-lo-sconcertante-epotente-su-re-di-giovanni-columbu/ (accessed December 15, 2016). Brentano, Clemens ([1833] 1904), The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ: From the Meditations of Anne Catherine Emmerich, New York: Benziger Brothers. Available online: http://catholicplanet.com/ebooks/Dolorous-Passion.pdf (accessed December 15, 2016). Costello, Carol (2014), “#Hot Jesus: Must He be Sexy?” CNN, May 28. Available online: http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/27/opinion/costello-jesus-movie/ (accessed December 15, 2016). Jackson, Wayne (n.d.), “Examining the Four Gospels,” Christian Courier. Available online: https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/273-examining-the-four-gospels (accessed December 15, 2016). Kazantzakis, Nikos ([1955] 1960), The Last Temptation of Christ, trans. P. A. Bien, New York: Simon and Schuster. McLuhan, Marshall, and Quentin Fiore (1967), The Medium is the Massage, London: Penguin. Otto, Rudolf ([1917] 1950), The Idea of the Holy, 2nd ed., trans. John W. Harvey, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oursler, Fulton (1949), The Greatest Story Ever Told, New York: Doubleday. Rothman, Noah (2014), “CNN’s Carol Costello Has a Problem with ‘Sexy’ Jesus,” Mediaite, February 27. Available online: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnns-carol-costello-has-aproblem-with-sexy-jesus/ (accessed December 15, 2016). Zaccagnini, Edoardo (2013), “Intervista a Giovanni Columbu,” Close-Up: Storia della vision, April 5. Available online: http://www.close-up.it/intervista-a-giovannicolumbu,8479 (accessed December 15, 2016). Zordan, Davide (2013), “L’immagine prima del Verbo,” Munera: Rivista europea di cultura, 3: 75–79. Available online: https://www.academia.edu/4871827/Prima_del_Verbo_ limmagine_Su_Re_ (accessed December 15, 2016).

29

A Deadly Daughter?: Salome’s Cinematic Afterlife Caroline Vander Stichele

Salome and her mother, Herodias, are minor characters in the Bible. They are only mentioned in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark because they play a crucial role in John the Baptist’s tragic end (Mt. 14:1-12; Mk 6:14-29). Neither gospel in fact names the daughter.1 She has been identified as Salome because Josephus mentions that Herodias had a daughter, named Salome (Ant. XVIII.136-37). According to Josephus, that was also the name of Herodias’s grandmother.2 Nevertheless, in Christian tradition the important Salome is Herodias’s daughter, because she asked that John’s head be served her on a platter. Numerous Christian writers have reflected on that gospel story and the role of the daughter therein, but there also exists a long history of visual representations in which Salome takes center stage. As early as 1908, Salome appeared onscreen and has continued to appear thereafter.3 As I have noted elsewhere, different trajectories are observable in the cinematic afterlife of Salome and Herodias (Vander Stichele 2015). A first trajectory is their appearance in Jesus films. A second is films devoted specifically to Salome, and a third trajectory consists of recordings of Richard Strauss’s 1905 opera Salome. In this chapter I discuss two examples from the second trajectory. The first dates from 1953 and was directed by Walter Dieterle, with Rita Hayworth in the role of Salome. The second Salomé, directed by the Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura, came out half a century later, in 2002. I will argue that these films engage the biblical story differently, informed as they are by their own cultural backgrounds. Nevertheless, they both rely on a shared prehistory, especially with regard to Salome’s dance.

Saving Salome (1953) In order to get a sense of the way in which the script of Salome (1953) engages the underlying biblical material, I first summarize its plot. Next, I compare the film’s representation of Salome with earlier representations, then I zoom in on her dance, and end by situating this film in its cultural context through a discussion of its genre.



A Deadly Daughter?: Salome’s Cinematic Afterlife

359

At the beginning of the film, Salome is in Rome, where she is courted by Marcellus Fabius, Tiberius’s nephew, who wants to marry her. When he asks permission to do so, Tiberius rejects his request and sends Salome back to Galilee on the next boat. On that same boat are Pontius Pilate and another Roman soldier, named Claudius, who will escort her to Galilee. On the way to Galilee, they meet John the Baptist at the Jordan River where Claudius prevents John from being killed by his fellow soldiers. When Salome arrives at the palace, she is welcomed by her mother, and spotted by Herod who immediately takes a keen interest in her. Salome hears that John the Baptist is preaching against her mother, who tells her that Herod is afraid of John because of a prophecy: “If a king of the house of Herod harms the Messiah, he will die in agony.” Herod believes that John is the Messiah. Herodias, however, wants to see John killed because he calls her an adulteress, the punishment for which is stoning. Salome approaches Claudius, who is infatuated with her, and asks him to arrest the Baptist, but he refuses. In the meantime, Herodias orders her servant to assassinate John, but Claudius, who is a secret admirer of John, prevents him from doing so. Herod suspects Herodias is pursuing John’s death, and he has John arrested and put in prison to silence him. Claudius pleads with Herod to release John, but to no avail. After Claudius leaves for Jerusalem, Herod approaches Salome and offers her jewelry to wear at his birthday banquet, but Salome rejects the offer. In the meantime, Claudius hears in Jerusalem about “a carpenter that claims to be the son of God.” Looking for him, he witnesses Jesus’s healing of a blind man in Bethany. Back in Galilee, Herod celebrates his birthday with a party. Herodias suggests to Salome that she should dance for the king: “Prevail upon the king to destroy the Baptist.” “But how can I—?” “You can persuade him.” “How?” “With your matchless beauty? Dance for him tonight.” “Dance for him? Mother, you know a woman who dances for the king becomes his possession.” “Yes, I know the custom.” “You would have me give myself to—?” “For the throne, yes.”

Salome runs off in disgust and bumps into Claudius who has come back from Jerusalem. She asks him to take her away, but he first wants to visit John in prison. Claudius tells John that he witnessed Jesus’s resurrection of Lazarus in Bethany. John identifies Jesus as the Messiah. Claudius wants to free the Baptist with the palace guards, but Salome tells him there is a more certain way: she will dance for the king and ask for John’s release. Claudius, however, does not want her to do this. Herodias has joined Herod at the party when Salome starts dancing for the king. Entranced, Herod whispers: “I give half my Kingdom . . .” Herodias replies: “No, give me the head of John the Baptist.” Herod nods. The executioner leaves and comes back with John’s head. When Salome sees the head brought in on a platter, she screams.

360

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Turning to her mother she says: “My mother . . . That I should be of your flesh and blood. I never want to look upon your face again.” Claudius comes to her rescue and they leave. In the final scene, people are climbing a hill while a voice is saying: “Love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you. And pray for them which spitefully use you and persecute you. That ye may be the children of your father which is in heaven. For He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good.” Claudius and Salome stand on the hill among the listeners. The camera pans out and we see Jesus in the distance standing on the mountain. Then, a text appears: “This was The Beginning.” The film clearly takes liberties with the biblical narrative. It does so by filling gaps, adding characters and motives. Some of these elements are drawn from the Bible, others from later sources. Apart from the Bible, striking similarities can be noted with the work of the Jewish historian Josephus, Gustave Flaubert’s story “Herodias” ([1877] 1961), and Oscar Wilde’s play Salomé ([1893] 1996). As already mentioned, Josephus provided Herodias’s daughter with a name, but his work was also often used as a source of information about the Herodian family. The French novelist, Gustave Flaubert, for instance, drew on Josephus for his short story, “Herodias.” Flaubert was, moreover, inspired by Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus ([1863] 1974), who also relied on Josephus. Renan’s work was widely read at the time. Halvor Moxnes notes, “It became the first really popular biography of Jesus, written in a literary style of high popularization of an academic work” (2012: 121). Writing about John’s death, Renan observes that one can easily imagine the hate that Herodias must have felt for the Baptist. In his view, Salome was as ambitious and dissolute as Herodias and became part of her mother’s plans ([1863] 1974: 244). Renan further notes that Salome’s dance was inappropriate for a distinguished person ([1863] 1974: 245), although the biblical story says nothing to that effect. Renan’s representation of Salome anticipates the growing popularity of Salome as femme fatale in the second half of the twentieth century (see Apostolos-Cappadona 2009: 190–209; Dijkstra 1986: 352–401). In any case, his Salome is already old enough to have a will of her own. Flaubert, however, foregrounds the mother’s ambition rather than the daughter’s: “Ever since childhood she [Herodias] had nursed the dreams of a great empire. It was to gain it that she had left her first husband for this one, who she now thought had duped her” (Flaubert [1877] 1961: 96). According to Flaubert, Herodias strategically uses Salome to further her goals. To that end she has her daughter come back from Rome and plays on Herod’s interest in Salome to manipulate him.4 In the film too Salome returns (she is sent back) from Rome and is used by her mother for her own purposes. An important difference with Flaubert, however, concerns the representation of Salome. In Flaubert, she is still a girl, “Herodias as she used to be in her youth” (Flaubert [1877] 1961: 120), and her dance is acrobatic and exotic.5 In the film the dance has exotic overtones, mostly created by Salome’s dress and the music, but it is certainly not acrobatic. The film’s inspiration for Salome’s dance comes rather from Oscar Wilde’s play, although the dance itself is not described by Wilde. He just notes that “Salomé dances the dance of the seven veils” (Wilde [1893] 1996: 253) and that is what she does in the film as well (for a recording, see “Salome Dance of 7 Veils” 2016).



A Deadly Daughter?: Salome’s Cinematic Afterlife

361

However, both Flaubert and Wilde were interested in the biblical story for entirely different reasons than earlier writers such as Renan. His observations are still made in the larger context of the story about Jesus, but Flaubert and Wilde lift the story out of its biblical context and shift the focus away from that context to the emotionally charged interaction between the characters in that story.6 The difference between Flaubert and Wilde is that Flaubert’s story foregrounds Herodias and Wilde’s play Salome. In the years that followed Wilde’s play, Salome’s dance started to lead a life of its own. It was put to music by Richard Strauss for his opera Salome (1905), which was based on Wilde’s play,7 and a few years later, in 1908, it was performed by the Canadian dancer Maud Alan (Bentley 2002: 47–84). Appealing as the veils, and especially their removal, were to the imagination, the dance also made its entry into film quite early. Famous actresses playing Salome in the early twentieth century included Theda Bara (1918) and Alla Nazimova (1923) and more followed.8 As with Flaubert, inspiration for both the dancing and (notable lack of) clothing was often found in the Orient at that time, especially in the Arab world (Buonaventura 1994), as well as in the visual representations of Salome, especially from the fin-de-siècle. The dance of Rita Hayworth as Salome in 1953 continued this trend, but a striking difference is that the dance’s purpose has dramatically changed: the dance is now performed in order to save John’s life. As a result, instead of serving as the instrument of her mother’s will, Salome now pursues her own agenda. Manipulating Herod’s desire for her is still part of that, but with a more noble goal in mind. As the cuts back and forth between Herod’s lustful face and Salome’s dance make clear, she is indeed successful in doing so. However, before she can even make her request, Herodias gets Herod’s permission for John’s beheading. As in the biblical story, the head is served on a platter, but this gruesome display is too much for Salome and Herod to stomach. They both cover their eyes. The only one enjoying this spectacle is Herodias. Instead of being a “bad girl of the Bible,” Salome thus becomes a good girl and even the dance does not change that impression. Compared to earlier images, the dance of Salome by Rita Hayworth looks pretty tame indeed, although it still has exotic and oriental overtones. John’s head is strategically brought in before the last veil is dropped, so we never even get to see Salome unveiled. As Alice Bach observes, “Her perfectpostured virginal portrayal reveals more about the Hollywood star system and male fears and fantasies of the Fifties than it shows a Lolita-sexy Salomé figure” (1997: 253). Moreover, a closer inspection of the dance scene itself shows the heavy editing. Hardly any dancing is seen at all. Instead one sees glimpses of Hayworth’s body through Herod’s male gaze. Thus, even if Hayworth and Valerie Bettis, her choreographer, meant the dance to be sensual, the film audience could hardly appreciate it as such (see McLean 2004: 196–97), and that may well have been intentional. In this respect, and others, Salome clearly is a product of postwar American Hollywood cinema. What is relevant in this regard is the issue of genre, more specifically the Hollywood epic. As Joanna Paul notes, “it is films set in the ancient world that tend to attract the label of epic above all others” (2013: 5). The biblical epic is a subgenre of this broader category. According to Adele Reinhartz, one can distinguish three types of biblical epics: Old Testament epics, Jesus epics, and sword-and-sandal epics or so-called peplum films (2016: 177). The latter category deals more specifically with fictional stories, often based on novels, situated in the Roman period, during the time of the

362

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

early church. They were especially popular in the decades after the Second World War. Notable examples are The Robe (1953) and the remakes of Quo Vadis (1951) and­ Ben-Hur (1959). Dieterle’s Salome came out in the same time period, but falls somewhere in between the Jesus films and peplum films, because on one hand the film deals with an episode from the gospels, featuring John the Baptist and to some extent also Jesus, but on the other hand it also displays characteristics that are typical for the swordand-sandal films, such as scenes playing in Rome, a Roman protagonist (Claudius), and some (minor) battle scenes. Other elements mentioned by Reinhartz are typical for the Hollywood epic in general and not specific to biblical epics, such as the use of big stars (Hayworth); exoticism, passion, and romance (between Salome and Claudius in this case); spectacle and near nudity (in Salome’s dance); and allusions to other sources (such as the seven veils in Wilde’s play). More in common with other biblical epics is the filling of gaps and addition of fictional characters (such as Claudius); the avoidance of direct representations of Jesus (who is only shown from a distance or from the back); Christianity’s ultimate victory (Salome and Claudius become followers of Jesus in the end); and the issue of gender. In line with other biblical epics from the same period, Salome reflects “the stereotypes (and not necessarily the reality) of the mid-twentieth century” (Reinhartz 2013: 94), with (good) men ruling the public sphere and (good) women as caretakers safely situated in the domestic sphere. At first sight, women seem to take the lead in this film, but Herodias is portrayed as evil, ambitious, and power hungry. She is masculinized while Herod is decadent and feminized, as male villains often are. Lindsay hits the mark here when he notes that “Charles Laughton plays Herod like a giant, randy eunuch. . . . He simpers over Salome, but one seriously questions whether he would possess the virility to do anything with her if the opportunity presented itself ” (2015: 107–08). Salome clearly has a will of her own and pursues her own agenda, but her mother triumphs when it comes to John, and Salome ultimately follows Claudius (and both of them Jesus). As a result, she never becomes too sexy or dangerous, but ends up being domesticated. So how is she doing half a century later?

Saura’s Salomé (2002) The second movie I want to discuss here is Salomé by the Spanish director Carlos Saura (1932–). He started his film career in the fifties at a time when a film director became understood as a film’s author, analogous to a book’s writer, an understanding that was typical of the so-called auteur cinema.9 Saura felt attracted to that notion and was identified as such an auteur at the time (Willem 2003: x–xi, D’Lugo 1991: 8–9). He also belonged to the New Spanish Cinema Movement of young directors that emerged in the sixties. The first part of his career took place under the Franco regime in Spain that lasted until 1975. This was a time of state censorship, which informed the style of the films he made at that time (Kovács 2000: 866). In his later work, Saura’s style changed, but he continued to engage issues related to Spanish culture and identity.



A Deadly Daughter?: Salome’s Cinematic Afterlife

363

Another recurring element in his oeuvre is the importance of music. As Saura himself states: “When I write or when I’m shooting, I see the scenes with music. The music almost always comes first. (. . .) That is, I almost always have made films as if they were musicals, but not like American musicals” (Castro [1996] 2003: 132). He also combines different types of music, such as classical music with Andalusian folk and gypsy music. Notable in this respect is his so-called Flamenco trilogy, which consists of Bodas de sangre (Blood Wedding 1981), Carmen (1983), and El amor brujo (Love, the Magician 1986). Apart from their engagement with gypsy culture, the three films have a focus on passion in common. For Saura, passion is “one of these elemental forces that act on life, like love, death, murder, jealousy—everything we find in the flamenco—beyond what the dance expresses” (Schupp [1986] 2003: 93). This may well have been the reason why Aida Gomez, an established Spanish professional dancer and choreographer, approached Saura for the ballet that she wanted to create. Saura agreed and later turned the idea into this film (Velleman 2003: 53).10 In line with Bodas de sangre, Salomé combines the style of a documentary with that of a dance performance, in that the film’s first part or prologue shows the preparations for the performance, while the second part focuses on the actual dance performance itself. As we learn in the prologue of Salomé, the gospel stories about the death of John the Baptist inspire the performance. The story of Salomé, Pere Arquillué, the director of the performance explains, has always fascinated him as one in which passion mixed with vengeance causes tragedy. Here, rather than being the victim of her mother’s intrigues, as in the biblical story, it is Salomé’s disproportionate passion for John the Baptist, understood as a battle between flesh and spirit, that leads to her beloved’s destruction. Wilde’s version ([1893] 1996), and to a lesser degree Richard Strauss’s opera based on Wilde’s play, informs this interpretation, as is also made clear by the inclusion of Salomé’s dance of the seven veils in the dance performance itself, as well as by the moon’s prominent place and symbolic meaning in the scenes with John the Baptist. The bluish light bathes these scenes in a mystical atmosphere. As explained in the film’s prologue, the character of John the Baptist is situated on a small plateau in order to set him apart from the other characters. His white dress is a stylized version of that of whirling dervishes in order to give him a more mystical character. The way he dances when he is introduced also evokes the dervishes. His character is musically represented by a voice singing a religious song. By contrast, Salomé wears a red dress, which reveals her bodily features. Over against the ascetic John she represents the flesh’s temptations. John, however, does not give in and this makes her seek revenge. Although there are important similarities between Saura’s film and the versions of Wilde and Strauss, the story is situated specifically in Spain. This move is most explicitly reflected in the dances to the music composed by Roque Baños, with its blend of traditional musical elements, such as flamenco, traditional Spanish dances, French court music, oriental tonalities, and in the case of John the Baptist, the melody and voice inspired by eighteenth-century religious music.11 However, in line with both Wilde and Strauss, oriental elements appear in Saura’s film as well, not only in the music, but even more so in the dancers’ costumes. Worth mentioning in this respect

364

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

is the reference in John’s dress to the Dervishes or Mevlevi, a Muslim Sufi order whose whirling dances are a mystical practice expressing one’s spiritual ascent and descent. The white gown of the dancers refers to shrouds as a symbol of death. Notably, John is played by Javier Toca, a black dancer of Cuban descent. Cuba was a Spanish colony until the end of the nineteenth century and was repopulated by slaves from Africa, after the original population died out. The choice of Toca to represent John the Baptist is open to interpretation, as the film provides no explanation. On one hand, this casting turns traditional dualism between black and white upside down, in that John represents purity and innocence over against the morally ambiguous characters of Herodias, Salomé, and Herod. On the other hand, it makes John appear an outsider, the Other, in a world dominated and colonized by white people. As such he can still appear as a critical voice, but one that is ultimately silenced by these powers. In both the 1953 and 2002 Salome films, John appears as the victim of the machinations of others. However, that is not yet the end here, because in Saura’s film Salomé dies too, rather than leaving with her Roman lover as in Dieterle’s version. As in Wilde’s play, Salomé dances in Saura’s film in order to have John beheaded, because he refused her love for him. Also, in line with the dominant representation since the fin-de-siècle, and as in the 1953 film version, Salomé is no longer a girl, as was still the case in Flaubert. Equally so, she dances for Herod to obtain something for herself, not for her mother. In Wilde, Herodias cheers when her daughter asks for John’s head: “Ah! That is well said, my daughter” (Wilde [1893] 1996: 253), but in Saura’s film both Herod and Herodias are appalled by Salomé’s request. In an earlier scene in Saura’s film, however, a link is established between mother and daughter, suggesting that they both kill the ones they love. In that scene, Salomé and John see Herodias kill her (much younger) lover. She cuts his throat with a knife that is handed to her by Herod. The scene identifies Herodias as both adulterous and murderous. Although Salomé is very upset when she sees this, she nevertheless ends up asking for the death of her loved one too. Her dance of the seven veils is instrumental in that. In Saura’s film the role of Salomé is played by Aida Gomez. As a result, her dance of the seven veils is more a dance performance than that of Hayworth, who is in the first place an actress. Nevertheless, there are striking similarities between the two dances. In both cases, the women enter the scene fully veiled; the dresses they wear consist of seven layers of veils, which are removed one by one during the dance; the music has oriental overtones and speeds up during the dance; people are sitting in a circle around the dancing woman; the editing cuts back and forth between the dancer and Herod’s clearly excited face. However, while the final veil is never dropped in 1953, it is in Saura’s version, which includes a medium close-up of Salomé’s naked bosom. Herod approaches her and puts his hands on her breasts, but Salomé pushes him away and makes a suggestive movement with her hand across her throat, indicating that she wants John’s head (for a recording, see “Saura’s Salomé Dance” 2010). This leads us to the issue of the film’s genre. On one hand, the film can be classified as art cinema, on the other, and as already noted, the film itself combines two different genres: that of the documentary and that of the filming of the actual dance performance. The documentary prepares the viewers for the dance performance in different ways.



A Deadly Daughter?: Salome’s Cinematic Afterlife

365

It introduces them to the topic of the performance through a retelling of the biblical story and to the director’s interpretive framework through a voiceover detailing his interest in the Salomé story because it mixes passion and vengeance, which cause this tragedy. The documentary also introduces the dancers and how they became dancers and documents the preparations for the performance, behind the scene and before the mirror. Accordingly, the viewer learns about a number of choices that have been made for the performance, regarding the music, light, costuming, set-up, and so on, but it informs the viewer of the performance’s highly constructed nature as well. We follow the director of the dance performance (who in a way represents Saura in the film and as such serves as his double) almost voyeuristically, as we see him look at things and people. We also see the camera itself reflected in the mirror at one point. Consequently, we are constantly made aware of the act of seeing. The use of mirrors, which are reflecting images, further accentuates this effect.12 By the time the final performance starts in the film’s second part, a particular frame of reference has been put in place that guides the way the viewer make sense of the events unfolding on stage. Our most important keys are the music and the dancers’ body language. The camera plays an important role in that. It does not simply register the dancers from a fixed point of view. Instead, the camera follows the movement of the dancers. It thus draws us into the performance itself, as we look at it from different angles and the whole story becomes a dance in which all the characters are involved. Initially, Herod sits on a throne that happens to be a wheelchair, but later in the performance he gets up and manifests his power with the two staffs that he holds in his hands. Herodias is paired with Herod most of the time. She is the queen mother, an older woman, who is still sexually active with a younger man. As such she subverts the stereotype of the older man with a younger woman, but in her case it is an adulterous relation that is not allowed to exist. She first allies with her daughter and protects her against Herod, but later changes sides and offers her to Herod. Salomé herself refuses Herod’s advances and feels attracted to John, who rejects her as a temptation of the flesh in favor of a higher, spiritual goal. John is also the most transgressive figure in terms of gender roles. He is the only man wearing a (long) skirt with his torso naked. All other men are fully covered. As a result, he is the queer one in terms of both ethnicity and gender. If Saura and Gomez consciously stripped the biblical story of its political elements in order to focus entirely on the interaction between the characters and in doing so took the earlier move of Flaubert and Wilde to its limit, its recontextualization in present-day Spanish culture, intentionally or not, foregrounds two groups that are still marginalized: the gypsies through their musical traditions and the immigrants with the casting of a Cuban dancer as John the Baptist.13

Conclusion It is clear that Wilde’s play has left its mark on the cultural impact of both the biblical subtexts and the representation of its characters and especially of Salome’s dance, which has been engraved ever since in Western cultural memory as the dance of the

366

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

seven veils. However, when comparing the 1953 and 2002 films with each other, we notice that there is still ample room left for interpretation. The dance’s function in the two films is diametrically opposed: in 2002, it is meant to get John killed, which is the dominant scenario in the Salome tradition; in 1953, it is meant to save John. In fact, this surprising plot twist is the most original feature of the 1953 Hollywood epic. Original as well is the fact that Salome leaves her mother to follow both Claudius and Jesus, even if that does not make her—or the film for that matter—more interesting as a result. As Kinnard and Davis put it, “Salome is remarkable more for its biblical distortions than for its effectiveness as a film” (1992: 83). In Saura’s 2002 film as well, Salomé has a will of her own that is not in agreement with her mother’s, and she chooses death instead of being killed as is the case in Wilde’s play.14 Distinctively different from Wilde and other representations from the fin-desiècle, however, is the fact that in neither film is Salome a femme fatale. That may well have been part of Hayworth’s star persona in earlier films, but Salome is too much of a good girl in 1953 for that. In line with Flaubert, Herodias is the real villain here. She is a deadly mother. In Saura’s film, it is the rejection of her passionate love for John that turns Salomé into a deadly daughter. However, unlike Wilde’s Salomé, she does not lose her agency as a result, even if that takes her to the very end.

Notes 1 Based on manuscript evidence and following N27, the NRSV has “his daughter ­Herodias” in Mk 6:22 rather than “the daughter of Herodias,” as in Mt. 14:6. For a discussion of the text-critical evidence, see Morgan Gillman (2003: 54–55n6). 2 For a discussion of the family history of Herodias and her daughter, see Morgan ­Gillman (2003). 3 Shepherd (2013: 199, 296–97) mentions three films entitled Salomé that came out in 1908. 4 Although there is no evidence that Salome grew up in Rome as both Flaubert and the film claim, her mother probably did (Morgan Gillman 2003: 10–15). Also, that ­Herodias left her former husband to live with Herod Antipas is mentioned in the gospels, but covered in more detail by Josephus (Ant. XVIII.109–11). He also suggests that she was driven by ambition (Ant. XVIII.240–46). 5 Flaubert’s source of inspiration was a dance performance he saw while traveling in Egypt (Flaubert [1887] 1994: 185) and a sculpture of Salome on the cathedral of Rouen in France ([1887] 1994: 129n3). 6 A similar move had already been made earlier in visual art, as Apostolos-Cappadona notes, when in High Renaissance and Baroque art “Salome became disassociated from the narrative of her scriptural identity to become an independent topic” (2009: 199). 7 See my discussion of Wilde and Strauss in Vander Stichele (2001). 8 Charles Bryant directed the famous 1923 film. For discussion and references, see Slater (2013: 217–23) and Dierkes-Thrun (2014: 125–60). 9 The French term “auteur” is used, because this type of cinema originated in France in the fifties and was put into practice in the sixties by French New Wave filmmakers (Buckland 2003: 74).



A Deadly Daughter?: Salome’s Cinematic Afterlife

367

10 Gomez was director of the Spanish National Ballet from 1988 until 2001 (see España es Cultura n.d.). 11 See notes on the film’s music on the DVD Salomé (MK2, 2003). 12 On the role of mirrors and the act of seeing in Saura’s work, especially in his Flamenco trilogy, see D’Lugo (1991: 192–224). 13 On the mixed response to Saura’s engagement with flamenco and gypsy culture, see Santaolalla (2003: 45–46). 14 I do not agree with the interpretation of Schumann (2006: 261), who states that Herod orders Salomé to be killed in the film. Both Herod and Herodias retreat in horror when Salomé kisses John’s head. Moreover, in an interview Gomez explicitly states that the end could not be the same as in the play (of Wilde) and that they did not quite know what to do with it, but that an idea came up during the making of the film (Interview on DVD Salomé (MK2, 2003).

Works cited Apostolos-Cappadona, Diane (2009), “Imagining Salome, or How la sauterelle Became la femme fatale,” in Christine E. Joynes and Christopher C. Rowland (eds.), From the Margins 2: Women of the New Testament and Their Afterlives, 190–209, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Bach, Alice (1997), Women, Seduction and Betrayal in Biblical Narrative, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bentley, Toni (2002), Sisters of Salome, New Haven: Yale University Press. Buckland, Warren (2003), Film Studies, London: Hodder & Stoughton. Buonaventura, Wendy (1994), Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World, London: Saqi. Campbell, Richard H., and Michael R. Pitts (1981), The Bible on Film: A Checklist, 1897-1980, Metuchen: Scarecrow. Castro, Antonio ([1996] 2003), “Interview with Carlos Saura,” in Linda M. Willem (ed.), Carlos Saura: Interviews, 115–43, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Dierkes-Thrun, Petra (2014), Salome’s Modernity: Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetics of Transgression, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Dijkstra, Bram (1986), Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture, New York: Oxford University Press. D’Lugo, Marvin (1991), The Films of Carlos Saura: The Practice of Seeing, Princeton: Princeton University Press. España es Cultura (n.d.), “Aida Gómez.” Available online: http://www.spainisculture.com/ en/artistas_creadores/aida_gomez.html (accessed April 17, 2017). Flaubert, Gustave ([1877] 1961), “Herodias,” in Three Tales, trans. Robert Baldick, 89–124, London: Penguin. Flaubert, Gustave ([1877] 1994), “Hérodias,” in Trois Contes, 97–134, Paris: Gallimard. Kinnard, Roy, and Tim Davis (1992), Divine Images: A History of Jesus on the Screen, New York: Citadel. Kovács, Katherine Singer (2000), “Saura, Carlos,” in Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast (eds.), International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Vol. 2, Directors, 4th ed., 864–66, Detroit: St James. Lindsay, Richard A. (2015), Hollywood Biblical Epics: Camp Spectacle and Queer Style from the Silent Era to the Modern Day, Santa Barbara: Praeger.

368

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

McLean, Adrienne L. (2004), Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Morgan Gillman, Florence (2003), Herodias: At Home in That Fox’s Den, Collegeville: Liturgical. Moxnes, Halvor (2012), Jesus and the Rise of Nationalism: A New Quest for the NineteenthCentury Historical Jesus, London: I. B. Tauris. Paul, Joanna (2013), Film and the Classical Epic Tradition, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reinhartz, Adele (2013), Bible and Cinema: An Introduction, New York/London: Routledge. Reinhartz, Adele (2016), “The Bible Epic,” in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (ed.), The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of the Bible and Its Reception in Film, Vol. 1, 175–92, Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception 2, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Renan, Ernest ([1863] 1974), Vie de Jésus, Paris: Gallimard. “Salome Dance of 7 Veils” (2016), YouTube. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=zgWhe3TtTD0 (accessed April 17, 2017). Santaolalla, Isabel (2003), “The Representation of Ethnicity and ‘Race’ in Contemporary Spanish Cinema,” in Cineaste (Contemporary Spanish Cinema Supplement), 29 (1): 44–50. “Saura’s Salomé Dance” (2010), YouTube. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=zIoL4SkN2XU (accessed April 17, 2017). Schumann, Adelheid (2006), “‘Und Salome tanzt doch!’ Carlos Sauras filmische Umsetzung des Salome-Mythos,” in Yasmin Hoffmann, Walburga Hülk, and Volker Roloff (eds.), Alte Mythen—Neue Medien, Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 251–62. Schupp, Patrick ([1986] 2003), “The Flamenco Trilogy,” in Linda M. Willem (ed.), Carlos Saura: Interviews, 88–95, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Shepherd, David (2013), The Bible on Silent Film: Spectacle, Story and Scripture in the Early Cinema, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Slater, Thomas (2013), “Salome (1923, 1953),” in Adele Reinhartz (ed.), Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films, 217–23, New York/London: Routledge. Vander Stichele, Caroline (2001), “Murderous Mother, Ditto Daughter: Herodias and Salome at the Opera,” in lectio difficilior. European Electronic Journal for Feminist Exegesis 2. Available online: http://www.lectio.unibe.ch (accessed May 4, 2017). Vander Stichele, Caroline (2015), “Herodias, IV, Film,” in D. C. Alison, Jr., C. Helmers, J. Schröter, T. C. Römer, C.-L. Seow, B. D. Walfish, and E. Ziolkowski (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, Vol. 11: Halah-Hizquni, 943–45, Berlin: De Gruyter. Velleman, Isabelle (2003), “Salomé de Carlos Saura,” Ciné-Bulles, 21 (4): 53–54. Wilde, Oscar ([1893] 1996), “Salomé,” in Antony Fothergill (ed.), Oscar Wilde: Plays, Prose Writings and Poems, London: J. M. Dent. Willem, Linda M. (2009), “Introduction,” in Linda M. Willem (ed.), Carlos Saura: Interviews, vii–xv, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

30

Belief Is in the Eye of the Spectator: Beholding the Other Actor’s Reaction Jon Solomon

This chapter concentrates on the scene in which the adult Jesus is introduced into the 1959 MGM version of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, by many measures one of the most successful biblical films ever produced, winning eleven Academy Awards and earning box-office receipts amounting to nearly $1 billion, adjusted for inflation.1 Simply stated, the reason this memorable scene warrants analysis is because it never shows Jesus’s face or identifies him or his divinity by traditional cinematic methods. The scene is iconic. Charlton Heston, playing the role of the Jewish prisoner, Judah Ben-Hur, has collapsed onto the dusty ground next to the well of the town of Nazareth. After untold miles of trekking across the Syrian desert from Jerusalem, the chain gang of prisoners is exhausted and dangerously dehydrated, using what little energy and will power they have left to beg for water. Some have been whipped by the Roman guards, and the audience has just seen a fallen prisoner kicked to the bottom of a desert sand dune and left for dead. Now as the prisoners crowd toward the well, the Roman decurion barks orders at the locals: “Water for the soldiers! Soldiers first! [to the prisoners] Get away from that well! No water for them!” He yells at several women to bring water for the horses. The extended horizontality of the 65 mm image of one of MGM’s state-of-the-art widescreen cameras pans across this activity from within a humble wooden dwelling. As the Romans, horses, slaves, and women scurry about outside, the foreground image reveals the hands of a carpenter putting aside his saw, moving toward the door, and resting his gentle arm clothed in rolled-up homespun on his workbench. Outside the camera pans along the line of prisoners begging for water and reciting the Shema, followed by two locals bringing water first to the mounted decurion and then to his white steed. As Miklós Rózsa’s music increases in intensity, an elderly woman offers a water-filled, hollowed gourd to the desperate prisoners, moving in the opposite direction from Judah. A young boy runs up to him with a different gourd of water, but just as Judah brings it to his parched lips, the decurion rips it out of his hands and orders, “No water for him!” Using his left hand the decurion takes a deep drink from the gourd while standing directly in front of Judah, who tries to capture precious

370

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

drops of spillage in his palms and bring them to his lips. But immediately the decurion shoves Judah out of the way with his right arm, and in a demonstrative gesture of contempt spits the water out of his mouth onto the ground. He gives the gourd to the prisoner next to Judah, who finally succumbs to frustration and collapses to the ground, pleading softly, “God help me.” The music abruptly changes. An ethereal ensemble of organ and strings plays a new religious leitmotif. The camera frames the carpenter’s arms, which now place a gourd of water into Judah’s hands and mouth and stroke his hair. After taking a long drink, Judah looks up at the face of the man belonging to those previously seen rolled-up sleeves. But the camera remains focused on Judah, who gradually takes on a countenance of calm and satisfaction and then returns to drinking. A dissonant note redirects the camera to the decurion, who reacts to this tableau of kindness by pointing and shouting, “You! I said no water for him!” Because they ignore him, the decurion, a whip in his right hand, aggressively steps toward them. As the carpenter rises in defiance, the camera views the brewing confrontation from behind. The suggestive clues from the carpenter’s shop, the homespun robe, the gentle hands, and the religious leitmotif are now confirmed by the shoulder-length chestnut hair. This must be Jesus. After taking those initial steps toward him, the decurion stops in his tracks. In his confusion he rocks awkwardly from side to side. A poignant close-up captures him looking at Jesus in controlled amazement. He looks aside, then again he looks at Jesus’s face. He does not know how to process what he is seeing. He turns to walk away, but then looks back for a third time, humbled, puzzled. The camera returns to the long shot from behind Jesus. The decurion orders his men to get the prisoners on their feet, and we see Judah taking one last long drink. Now he stares in amazement at Jesus. The frame changes from close-up to two-shot as Judah rises, still looking at the face of Jesus. A mounted Roman guard orders “Back to your place!” and whips him. The music swells for another half-minute, supplemented by the sound of the chains, as the camera continues to focus on Judah and the other prisoners being led off into the distance. Several times Judah looks back at Jesus, which inspires him as he marches on toward his immediate future as a brutalized Roman galley slave. The scene belonged to the film’s earliest conception. The script’s first version, penned by Karl Tunberg in 1955, already sketches it out in considerable detail, including the trek through the desert, the dying prisoner, and then specifies that both Judah and the decurion look at Jesus with amazement. This portion of the script reads as follows (with the original spellings preserved): CLOSE SHOT—BEN HUR He sprawls in the dust of the street where he has fallen. He doesn’t move. His eyes are closed. The hand with the gourd appears, bringing the water close to Ben Hur’s face. His eyes open. He stares unbelievingly. He lifts his head—gets his lips to the gourd—drinks of the healing water. Then, revived, he props himself on one elbow, breathing heavily, still unaware of his benefactor. A hand touches his forehead, as if in benediction. Ben Hur looks up, wonderingly. The torment seems to go out of him. His eyes shine with gratitude, with awe.



Belief Is in the Eye of the Spectator

371

LONGER SHOT TOWARD THE DECURIAN Whip in hand, he starts purposefully forward. As he comes closer, the figure of Ben Hur’s benefactor rises in the foreground, holding the gourd. The young man has glowing, chestnut-coloured hair, and wears a simple peasant’s woolen tunic, but his face cannot be seen. He stands there, back to CAMERA, watching the approaching Roman. Suddenly the Roman stops. CLOSE SHOT—THE DECURIAN He seems spellbound, perplexed, confused. Slowly he lowers the whip. For a moment he stands irresolutely, his glance riveted on the unseen figure. Then he mutters to himself. Decurian (inaudibly) It’s only a drink of water . . . what’s a drink of water . . . He moves backward a step or two, awkwardly, still staring. Then he moves backward another step or two. He finds himself near a villager, but never takes his eyes from the unseen young man.

To achieve an effective realization, director William Wyler was not only characteristically demanding but also did not hesitate to go over-budget. He chose Remington Olmsted, an American expatriate actor and Roman restauranteur, to play the decurion (Herman 1996: 404–05; Heston 1978: 54–55; 1995: 196–97). On the day of the shoot in Fiuggi, a hill town more than one hour away from Rome by car, Wyler looked through the lens and immediately recognized that the actor playing the decurion was not Olmsted. Assistant Director Gus Agosti reminded Wyler that this other actor was on the short list, but Wyler insisted on using Olmstead and halted production until Olmstead could be found, signed, and driven from Rome to Fiuggi, costing the production some $15,000 in order to capture the reaction shots Wyler expected. This carefully crafted introduction of Jesus is a veritable hierophany (Bird 1982: 3–22). Without ever confirming his identification, the film prepares the viewer for the presence of Jesus by incorporating a number of familiar visual motifs and vividly illustrates his capacity for compassion for the poor and downtrodden. And while Jesus’s defiance of authority is part of the biblical tradition as well, the decurion’s reaction is innovative in that it is story-specific. It has been suggested that MGM’s decision not to photograph Christ’s face and concentrate instead on the actors’ faces reacting to seeing his visage was due to the strictures of the Production Code Administration or to avoid blasphemy, but it stems directly from the legally protected restrictions established by Lew Wallace, the author of the original 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (Reinhartz 2007: 15; 2009: 421; Hark 2016: 169). The film scene is not at all an exact cinematic recreation of Wallace’s scene. Wallace does, albeit briefly and efficiently, describe Jesus’s face, hair, and eyes, and he does not describe at all the desert trek, let alone the cruel death of one of the prisoners. His scene [2.7] begins as the detachment of prisoners led by a Roman decurion approached the well in Nazareth, where “a youth who came up with Joseph” laid down his carpenter’s tool, took a pitcher of water, and gave the prisoner a drink. This happened so quickly

372

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

and quietly that the guard did not interfere. Indeed, he, too, was deeply affected by the encounter with Jesus: The hand laid kindly upon his shoulder awoke the unfortunate Judah, and, looking up, he saw a face he never forgot—the face of a boy about his own age, shaded by locks of yellowish bright chestnut hair; a face lighted by dark-blue eyes, at the time so soft, so appealing, so full of love and holy purpose, that they had all the power of command and will. The spirit of the Jew, hardened though it was by days and nights of suffering, and so embittered by wrong that its dreams of revenge took in all the world, melted under the stranger’s look, and became as a child’s. He put his lips to the pitcher, and drank long and deep. Not a word was said to him, nor did he say a word. When the draught was finished, the hand that had been resting upon the sufferer’s shoulder was placed upon his head, and stayed there in the dusty locks time enough to say a blessing; the stranger then returned the pitcher to its place on the stone, and, taking his axe again, went back to Rabbi Joseph. All eyes went with him, the decurion’s as well as those of the villagers. This was the end of the scene at the well. When the men had drunk, and the horses, the march was resumed. But the temper of the Decurion was not as it had been; he himself raised the prisoner from the dust, and helped him on a horse behind a soldier. . . . And so, for the first time, Judah and the son of Mary met and parted.

Here Wallace introduced a number of the most important elements that would reappear in the subsequent film adaptation—the visual focus on Jesus’s “hand laid kindly” at both the episode’s beginning and conclusion, the impact of looking upon Jesus’s face, his silence, the chestnut hair, the face that emanates “love and holy purpose” as well as “the power of command and will,” the uplifting result of gazing upon him, the focus on the Roman decurion, and the reverent mystery surrounding the carpenter of Nazareth’s identity. Wallace created this scene not only to introduce the adult Jesus but, structurally speaking, to tie the various parts of this story together. Originally he had written only a short story about the three wise men and the nativity. A few years later he decided to expand the project considerably and employ the story as a prelude to a fictionalized tale-of-the-Christ novel about a Jerusalem teenager who is extrajudicially condemned to row as a Roman galley slave and then returns home to witness the passion and crucifixion. Familiar with the tenets of the Church of Christ and its literal biblical interpretation taught by his stepmother Zerelda Sanders Wallace and Samuel Hoshour, disciples of the Stone-Campbell Movement, and conforming to the norms of other high-profile Christological novels of the 1870s, most notably Henry Ward Beecher’s The Life of Jesus the Christ (1871) and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Footsteps of the Master (1877), Wallace did not want to incorporate any events or attribute any words to Jesus that were not recorded in the New Testament (Solomon 2016: 192–99). Consequently, in the later sections of the novel he cleverly inserts Judah into New Testament episodes by making Judah the “certain young man” who flees naked in Mk



Belief Is in the Eye of the Spectator

373

14:51 and the unnamed man who gives Jesus a drink from a sponge in Mt. 27:48. The glaring exception to this is the meeting at the Nazareth well, which Wallace inserted into his story to establish a relationship between Judah and Jesus as young men that would be revisited later during the crucifixion. (In the 1959 film Judah reciprocates by giving Jesus water on the Via Dolorosa.) Because Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ achieved extraordinary sales by 1885 and continued to do so throughout the next few decades, nearly a million readers recognized Wallace as the celebrity author of a beloved Christological novel. Nonetheless, he rarely attended church, and although he publically insisted upon an invariable reverence for Jesus, he made it clear, invoking the censure of the Catholic Church, that “the Jesus Christ in whom I believe was, in all the stages of his life, a human being. His divinity was the Spirit within him, and the Spirit was God” (Wallace 1888: 9).2 Despite his theological idiosyncrasies, Wallace had for nearly a decade after the novel was published refused to allow anyone to adapt the novel for the dramatic stage. When he did allow at least a tableau and pantomime version in 1889, Wallace, who had for many years been a practicing attorney, drew up his own contract forbidding the producers from including a role for Jesus, even though it was central to his “tale of the Christ.” In 1899, when he sold the rights for the spectacular Broadway adaptation to Klaw & Erlanger, the contract again specified that “the character of Christ shall not be personated” (Agreement 1899). When Abraham Erlanger sold Samuel Goldwyn the rights to Ben-Hur two decades later in 1921, the legal agreement included a similar stipulation, and this was the agreement that was inherited by the fledgling MGM in 1924 (Agreement 1921). The well scene is not included in the 1907 Kalem adaptation, so the 1925 MGM version contains the scene’s first cinematic adaptation, laying the foundation for its 1959 counterpart (Walsh 2016: 125–42). The 1925 scenario, adaptation, and continuity by June Mathis, Carey Wilson, and Bess Meredyth created the desert trek in which the gruff Roman decurion abuses and whips the prisoners, especially Judah BenHur, and leaves one of the slaves for dead. The entourage then passes by a carpenter’s shop in Nazareth—identified by the intertitle—and halts at the well. We see the visual realization of Wallace’s scene as the camera shows us only the arm of the “carpenter’s son.” At the side of the well the Roman commander drinks first, harshly grabs Judah by the hair and tosses him aside, then torments him by pouring a gourd full of water into the ground. Judah, now collapsed onto the ground, says in the intertitle, “My torment is more than I can bear! Is there no God left in Israel?” We see the arm leave the saw behind and take up a gourd to offer water to the prostrate Judah and then stroke his hair. Judah takes on a look of calm, rises to his feet, and then prays to heaven, emboldened by the encounter. The scene ends with an intertitle directly quoting Wallace’s last line, “And so, for the first time, Judah and the Son of Mary met—and parted,” and a final shot of the iconic arm sawing in the shop. Out of respect for the wishes of Wallace, who had died in 1905, the face of Jesus is never shown. Subsequent versions of Ben-Hur did not follow this prescription. The 1988 animated version shows frontal facial paintings of Jesus in front of the full sphere of the blazing sun creating a golden halo effect. The animated 1990 Ben-Hur: A Race to Glory (produced in 1990 but released on video in 1992) uses the “No water for him!” line

374

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

from the 1959 film and shows Jesus’s face initially before placing his head in front of a blinding sun that obscures it somewhat in shadow. Jesus in the 2003 animated version, narrated by Charlton Heston, actually smiles at Judah as he gives him a drink, and the decurion is completely unaffected by his gaze. The 2010 telefilm, rather drastically rewritten, does not include a scene at the well but revises the encounter by having Jesus (Julian Casey), in full view, tell Judah to “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” During the passion Jesus repeats the message to him, and Judah forgives Messala. The recent 2016 adaptation moves the encounter to Jerusalem. There as Judah bears the additional burden of a yoke as he is being marched out of town with other prisoners, Jesus, played by Rodrigo Santoro, walks down a flight of steps, stares down the Roman guard, takes his cup, gives Judah a drink, and helps him up. When Judah thanks him, Jesus replies, “You’d do the same.” Not filming Jesus’s face and relying instead on the reaction of the actors who confront him face-to-face was not part of the cinematic tradition, nor would it become so. At the same time Wallace was stipulating in the Klaw & Erlanger agreement that “the character of Christ shall not be personated,” Klaw & Erlanger were also bringing some of the first cinematic representations of the Passion Play at Oberammergau to American nickelodeons, contemporary magazines were publishing photographs of actors portraying Jesus in such traditional European plays,3 and several of the earliest narrative films were portraying actors as Jesus as well (Niver 1976: 1–27): for example, Pathé Frères’s La Vie et la Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (1902–05), Gaumont’s La vie du Christ (La Naissance, la vie et la mort du Christ 1906), Kalem’s From the Manger to the Cross (1912), Cines’s Christus (1916), Thomas H. Ince’s Civilization (1916), and Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) (Shepherd 2016). In 1927, just two years after the release of the first MGM Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, Cecil B. De Mille released The King of Kings, featuring H. B. Warner as Jesus. After a lengthy opening sequence, DeMille introduced him to the audience by bringing him directly and strikingly into focus through the subjective view of a young blind girl as she is healed. In contrast, the 1961 MGM King of Kings starring Jeffrey Hunter makes no attempt to shield the face of Jesus from the camera. And, of course, this direct photography of an actor playing Jesus would remain the cinematic norm, with some exceptions, thereafter. It was already part of the cinematic vocabulary to express belief by focusing the camera on the actor who beholds the extraordinary. The power that Bela Lugosi projects as a vampire over his adversary Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) in Dracula (1931), for instance, is demonstrated by having Lugosi reach out his right arm and form the fingers of his right hand into what has become a conventional position for suggesting the projection of a force. As Dracula assumes that position and repeats the command “Come, here!” to Van Helsing, the latter’s face suggests entrancement, and he slowly advances. Dracula then curls his fingers toward himself, but now Van Helsing pulls back and escapes the trance. The camera focuses on Van Helsing to convince the spectators that the actor simply holding his arm and hand out and saying “Come, here!” is emitting a strong meta-human force. Similarly, near the beginning of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), the villain, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), uses the Force to elicit from a captured member of the Resistance (Poe Dameron [Oscar Isaac]) the whereabouts of secret information. Ren’s face is covered by a complex mask, so it



Belief Is in the Eye of the Spectator

375

cannot project a compelling gaze like the one Lugosi projects—or the one Jesus seems to project in Ben-Hur. Instead, Ren extends his black-gloved right hand out toward Poe’s face to project his psychic power. Much as in Dracula, the camera point of view alternates from the powerful figure to the affected in two-shots and close-ups. Poe begins breathing heavily and irregularly, then his head is thrown backward against the restraint and torture chair, and he gasps in some pain. When Ren, still holding his hand out, asks, “Where is it?” Poe fights back, says he will not be intimidated, leans forward in increased pain, now succumbing to the invisible power, and lets out a scream, suggesting that he has been unable to resist. More than an hour later in the film, Ren, now without a mask, tries to do the same to Rey (Daisy Ridley). Again, he barely changes expressions and holds his hand out in a gesture of projecting power. Viewing this from similar camera vantage points, we see that her breathing is labored and that she noticeably shakes, but she is steadfastly able to resist his power because she is “strong with the Force.” In Independence Day (1996), a captured extraterrestrial pilot thought to be dead suddenly comes to life. The alien uses telepathic powers to control the project scientist, played by Brent Spiner. As in these other examples, at the beginning of the encounter the alien’s face remains relatively static while Spiner runs through a number of contorted facial expressions and head and upper body movements. In each of these instances, however, unlike the Ben-Hur scene, the camera views the face of the being emitting the telepathic force, but convincing the audience to believe that this force is “real” is, as in the Ben-Hur scene, largely dependent on the reactions of the affected actor. Belief is integral to both religious and cinematic processes. Worshipping a divinity and watching a film both frequently focus on an object that is metahuman, extraordinarily benign or evil, and require spiritual, emotional, and/or intellectual acceptance by the worshipper and audience (Scott 2005: 217–24). Of course there are multiple and profound differences between religion and cinema, but this specific analogy can be expanded cautiously. In scriptural narratives one can read stories or declarations about a divinity, divine prophecies, or miraculous events, or one can listen to a member of the clergy or communicate with members of an institution that refer to, relate, or elaborate on these. From the cinematic spectator’s perspective, we view a story played out in costume in front of a camera that, ideally, so successfully captures, collapses, enhances, and connects images that the resulting film can elicit an emotional response, profound thought, or even Aristotelian catharsis. Without belief, these common religious and cinematic experiences are not effective. Of course, belief in a god is often belief in a deep, personal spiritual relationship, while believing in the characters and actions of a film depends simply upon the superficial acceptance of a fictional drama. Moreover, using a word and concept like “faith” for “belief ” leans more toward the religion side, while “acceptance” describes a process that could be argued to lean more toward the cinema side. The latter term suggests “buying the premise,” which is so essential for becoming engaged in the fictional drama. But between the extremes there are the aforementioned mythopoeic and narrative ritualistic processes, which are part of film and, more significantly, are integral parts of religion (Segal 1980a: 173–85).

376

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

This invokes the centuries-old debate as to whether belief in god is rational if that belief is not based on evidence (on the cognitive science of religion, see Clark and Barrett 2011: 639–75; Koons 2011: 839–50; Thurow 2013: 77–98). Our scene in Ben-Hur obviates this quandary by not only providing a visual, anthropomorphic representation of Jesus but also demonstrating visibly the power he emanates over both Judah, a potentially willing believer of the Jewish faith, and the Roman decurion, who represents the traditional pagan adversary that would soon persecute Christians. In contrast, Richard Dawkins and others have advocated the irrationality of religion as a by-product of the same non-intellectual process that can fail to distinguish between genuine fears and false positives, and led historically to animistic beliefs, polytheism, and then monotheism (Barrett 2000: 29–34; Shermer 2006: 471–72). Our scene provides both cognitive positives and emotional comfort. A recent article by Robert Audi further distinguishes between “propositional belief ” (belief that god will grant us salvation or condemn us to damnation) and “attitudinal belief ” (believing in a god), both of which apply to the film audience (Audi 2008: 87–102). In this instance the distinction is between believing the actor portraying Jesus (American heldentenor Claude Heater) is Jesus and that he is capable of visibly overpowering a Roman military commander, the latter profoundly helping to establish the former (Hark 2016: 166–69). Philosophical and scientific theories by nature focus on belief, while social scientific approaches concern themselves primarily with the relationships between believers (Segal 1980b: 403–13; Lindquist and Coleman 2008: 1–18). Social activities like religious worship and participation in group-think, for instance, reinforce suppositions, hints, and an inchoate willingness to believe that bring participants into submission and confirmation (Marshall 2002: 360–80). But, of course this process can also be applied to the group activity of sitting in a dark theater filled with grand programmatic music and crowded with like-minded people eager to obtain the enjoyment they paid for and subconsciously accept what they see on the screen. This is particularly true in a heavily promoted, critically and popularly acclaimed epic film like Ben-Hur (“The World’s Most Honored Film”). An anthropological approach, like that advanced by Catherine Bell, who argued that belief is to religion as the particular is to the universal, helps us (or me, at least) understand how a movie audience that contains fallen Catholics, Jews, non-Christians, agnostics, atheists, and the like can nonetheless stir would-be divine recognition in those that do not recognize or have long ago lost interest in Jesus as a divine figure (O’Neill 2012: 299–316). For them belief that Jesus so drastically affects the Roman decurion is momentary and focused, not of conversional magnitude, although of course there are other permutations that allow nonbelievers to be receptive to film’s representation of a divinity (see Lyden 2003: 119–20). Film scholarship has concentrated more on the aesthetics of popular film and the realities of the film industry, but Alison Griffiths has compared the “revered gaze” audiences experienced in viewing Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) in a theatrical auditorium with the effect of viewing two- or three-dimensional religious art in medieval cathedrals, citing Otto von Simson’s concept of “the representation of supernatural reality” to describe the transformation of theaters into “multiplex shrines” (2007: 3–39). Here belief in Christ’s divinity was generated by the spectacle and power of images. Jody Enders assessed this phenomenon by writing that “bloodshed and



Belief Is in the Eye of the Spectator

377

belief went hand in hand with graphic, spectacular violence . . . [to create] the illusion of authenticity” (2006: 190). While others lambast the use of spectacle to present the melodramatic (e.g., Nayar 2010: 100–28), Peter Fraser described conversion scenes like those in the various versions of Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments (1956), King of Kings), and several other films in the following way: These films tend to focus on the religious struggle of one character of torn allegiance. The crisis will be melodramatically highlighted by the close attention of the camera, usually on facial gestures and expressions. The character will invariably convert to an orthodox religious position in a moment which the film will celebrate with grand stylistic gestures. . . . Often the conversion will be foreshadowed throughout the film through subtle or not so subtle Christian allusions—images of crosses, prayers, suggestive dialogue, and so on. And, of course, the spectator of the film is encouraged to embrace the celebration. (1998: 163–64)

Missing or ignoring the individuality of our scene in Ben-Hur, Margaret Ruth Miles agrees in general: Contemporary films are reacting against the earlier use of some exceedingly obvious and banal conventions for indicating religious feeling and motivation. One need only recall the echo-chamber voice with which Jesus spoke in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), the heavily vibrating violins in the background, the soft lighting and/or photographing through gauze, and the camera’s “eye” looking up at Jesus from below. The Ten Commandments (1956), The Robe (1953), and Ben-Hur (1959) used similar conventions. (1996: 48)

Murray Smith championed a psychoanalytic approach in discussing identification and emotional responses to fictional characters, a process that requires recognition, alignment, and allegiance at three levels of engagement leading toward sympathy, but not belief (1994: 34–56). His test case was Hitchcock’s 1956 film, The Man Who Knew Too Much, but for our purposes, the spectator’s allegiance is directed toward the fictional character of Judah Ben-Hur, and perhaps even the Roman decurion upon his quasi-conversion, but not Jesus. In the realm of film spectatorship Smith also discussed in detail several interpretations of such concepts as illusion, fantasy, and imagination, but these apply mostly to what Audi defined as propositional belief (Smith 1995: 113–27). At best Smith seems to suggest that when we “see” Jesus onscreen, we know we are watching an actor playing the role of Jesus but have no difficulty processing this in routine fashion to engage with that fictional world (1998: 63–65). Like several other memorable moments in mid-twentieth-century Ancients, particularly the climactic “I’m Spartacus!” in Universal’s Spartacus (1960), the decurion scene had an afterlife. Heston reports that for several of the remaining months of the Ben-Hur production, when anyone made a mistake, nearby cast and crew would tease, “No water for him!” (Heston 1995: 197). A 23-minute, 1977 television parody of the 1959 Ben-Hur by SCTV spoofed the scene. Whipped and denied water, prostrate on the ground, Judah is approached by a man wearing checkered pants shown only from

378

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

the waist down. Continuing the anachronism, the unseen savior pours Judah a martini shaken with ice and served with a skewered olive. Much more recently, in Hail, Caesar! (2016), the George Clooney character (Baird Whitlock) acts in a parody of the scene. The plot of Hail, Caesar! revolves around a single day in a fictitious movie studio that, among other things, is filming an ancient named Hail, Caesar: A Tale of the Christ. Very early on we see a brief rush of Saul of Tarsus looking toward the heaven and cowering before a divine image. At this point an insert saying “DIVINE PRESENCE TO BE SHOT” is the first parodic device. A few minutes later the Josh Brolin character explains the plot to a group of religious representatives, pointing out that Jesus Christ is “seen only fleetingly, and with extreme taste.” He goes on to parallel the story of Ben-Hur in that the story of Jesus is seen through the eyes of a fictitious character, in this instance the Clooney character named Autolycus Antoninus. Late in the evening we are shown four of the previous day’s rushes. The first begins with a close-up of a gourd being dipped into a bucket of water, setting us up for a parody of the Nazareth well scene from Ben-Hur. Clooney’s character, dressed in the uniform of a Roman commander, shoves his way through a line of prisoners while saying “Romans before slaves. Romans before slaves. Make room.” But as he reaches the front of the line he is stunned by the face and stature of the Jesus figure, costumed in a bright homespun and sporting shoulder-length reddish golden hair. Clooney stares and then cowers in fear and awe. After a few seconds of (intentionally) exaggerated reactions, he says, barely moving his lips, “Howz that? Whadya think?” Cut. The next rush shows him staring with a look of understanding and reassurance. Cut. The third barely begins when Clooney wipes his mouth and complains about spittle. Cut. The fourth has even more exaggerated mugging by Clooney as we hear the director on the set say, “Squint against the grandeur! It’s blinding. Blinding!” In the final analysis, the scene in the 1959 MGM Ben-Hur that introduces the adult Jesus has a unique place in the history of popular religious films. Visually it synthesizes widescreen cinematic technique, the directorial eye, and the spectatorial gaze, and narratively it synthesizes popular religious literature, Christological tradition, and divine presence. At the beginning of the process are Zerelda Wallace, a charter member of the Indianapolis Church of Christ, and Samuel Hoshour, an integral member of the Stone-Campbell Movement’s educational program. Already in the 1830s they seem to have inculcated Wallace with a particular reverence for the anthropomorphic Jesus of the New Testament and the concept of the revelation, and although Wallace only rarely engaged in or even mentioned religious matters throughout his life either publicly or privately, he repeatedly—and legally—restricted producers from portraying Jesus onstage in dramatic adaptations of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. As the creator, copyright holder, and legal guardian of this extremely popular property who was widely recognized as a literary celebrity, former Civil War general, former governor of the New Mexico Territory, and former minister to the Ottoman court, Wallace had a an extraordinary amount of authority, so much so that Abraham Erlanger, himself an extraordinarily powerful Broadway mogul, acquiesced to his demand to not represent Jesus onstage, and Erlanger respected Wallace’s wishes long after his death and introduced them into a cinematic tradition that was still echoing in 2016.



Belief Is in the Eye of the Spectator

379

Notes 1 Recent studies of the film, with additional bibliography, are found in Solomon (2016): 728–823, Hark (2016): 162–78, and Kreitzer (2013): 34–39. 2 For the official censure by the Catholic Church, see M.C.M. (1905). 3 For a 1900 photograph of Anton Lang playing Christ at Oberammergau, see the Library of Congress website n.d.

Works cited Agreement of April 11, 1899, Lilly Library. Agreement of July 22, 1921, Lilly Library. Audi, Robert (2008), “Belief, Faith, and Acceptance,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 63: 87–102. Barrett, Justin L. (2000), “Exploring the Natural Foundations of Religion,” Trends in Cognitive Science, 4: 29–34. Beecher, Henry Ward (1871), The Life of Jesus the Christ, New York: J. B. Ford. Bird, Michael (1982), “Film as Hierophany,” in John R. May and Michael Bird (eds.), Religion in Film, Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press. Clark, Kelly James, and Justin L. Barrett (2011), “Reidian Religious Epistemology and the Cognitive Science of Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 79: 639–75. Enders, Jody (2006), “Seeing Is Not Believing,” in Timothy K. Beal and Tod Linafelt (eds.), Mel Gibson’s Bible: Religion, Popular Culture, and The Passion of the Christ, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fraser, Peter (1998), Images of the Passion: The Sacramental Mode in Film, Westport: Praeger. Griffiths, Alison (2007), “The Revered Gaze: The Medieval Imaginary of Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ,’” Cinema Journal, 46: 3–39. Hark, Ina Rae (2016), “The Erotics of the Galley Slave,” in Barbara Ryan and Milette Shamir (eds.), Bigger Than Ben-Hur: The Book, Its Adaptations, and Their Audiences, 162–78, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Herman, Jan (1996), A Talent for Trouble: The Life of Hollywood’s Most Acclaimed Director, William Wyler, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Heston, Charlton (1978), The Actor’s Life: Journals, 1956-1976, New York: E. P. Dutton. Heston, Charlton (1995), In the Arena: An Autobiography, New York: Boulevard. Koons, Jeremy Randel (2011), “Plantinga on Properly Basic Belief in God: Lessons from the Epistemology of Perception,” The Philosophical Quarterly, 61: 839–50. Kreitzer, Larry J. (2013), “Ben-Hur (1959),” in Adele Reinhartz (ed.), Bible and Cinema, 34–39, New York and London: Routledge. Library of Congress (n.d.), “Christ (Anton Lang) in Passion Play, Oberammergau, Bavaria, Germany.” Available online: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ggb2004003201/ (accessed February 16, 2017). Lindquist, Galina, and Simon Coleman (2008), “Introduction: Against Belief?” Social Analysis, 52: 1–18. Lyden, John C. (2003), Film as Religion: Myths, Morals, and Rituals, New York: New York University Press.

380

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Marshall, Douglas A. (2002), “Behavior, Belonging, and Belief: A Theory of Ritual Practice,” Sociological Theory, 20: 360–80. M.C.M. (1905), “The Columbian Reading Union,” New Catholic World, 81 April: 138. Miles, Margaret (1996), Seeing and Believing: Religion and Values in Movies, Boston: Beacon. Nayar, Sheila J. (2010), “Reconfiguring the ‘Genuinely’ Religious Films: The Oral Contours of the Overabundant Epic,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 78: 100–28. Niver, Kemp. R. (Bebe Bengsten [ed.]) (1976), Klaw & Erlanger Present Famous Plays in Pictures, Los Angeles: Locare Research Group. O’Neill, Kevin Lewis (2012), “Pastor Harold Caballeros Believes in Demons: Belief and Believing in the Study of Religion,” History of Religions, 51: 299–316. Reinhartz, Adele (2007), Jesus of Hollywood, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reinhartz, Adele (2009), “Jesus and Christ-Figures,” in John Lyden (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film, New York and London: Routledge. Scott, Michael (2005), “Do Religious Beliefs Aim at the Truth? Religious Studies, 41: 217–24. Segal, Robert A. (1980a), “The Myth-Ritualist Theory of Religion,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 19: 173–85. Segal, Robert A. (1980b), “The Social Sciences and the Truth of Religious Belief,” The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 48: 403–13. Shepherd, David J. (ed.) (2016), The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927), New York and London: Routledge. Shermer, Michael (2006), “Review of Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon,” Science, 311 (27): 471–72. Smith, Murray (1994), “Altered States: Character and Emotional Response in the Cinema,” Cinema Journal, 33: 34–56. Smith, Murray (1995), “Film Spectatorship and the Institution of Fiction,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 53: 113–27. Smith, Murray (1998), “Regarding Film Spectatorship: A Reply to Richard Allen,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 56: 63–65. Solomon, Jon (2016), Ben-Hur: The Original Blockbuster, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Stowe, Harriet Beecher (1877), Footsteps of the Master, New York: J. B. Ford. Thurow, Joshua C. (2013), “Does Cognitive Science Show Belief in God to be Irrational? The Epistemic Consequences of the Cognitive Science of Religion,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 74: 77–98. Wallace, Lew (1880), Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, New York: Harper & Bros. Wallace, Lew (1888), The Boyhood of Christ, New York: Harper & Bros. Walsh, Richard (2016), “Getting Judas Right,” in Barbara Ryan and Milette Shamir (eds.), Bigger Than Ben-Hur: The Book, Its Adaptations, and Their Audiences, 125–42, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.

31

Ben-Hur (2016): Jesus Finds a Voice Larry J. Kreitzer

There are some films that are so iconic that it is hard to imagine they could ever be remade. William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959) is one of those films. The chariot-racing sequence alone is enough to fix the film in the mind of most viewers, even though it takes only eight minutes of the film’s three and a half hours. Wyler’s film was phenomenally successful, and was nominated for twelve Academy Awards, winning eleven of them, a record that has only been matched twice (Titanic in 1997 and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003). It helped secure the place of Charlton Heston as one of Hollywood’s leading actors, and gifted him with his only Oscar as Best Actor. Wyler’s film was based on General Lew Wallace’s novel from 1880 entitled Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. It is perhaps the most well-known film adaptation of the story, although it is by no means the only one. In fact, there have been seven films based on Wallace’s novel including the most recent adaptation by the Russian-Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov. These seven films are: Ben Hur (1907 silent) Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925 silent) Ben-Hur (1959) Ben-Hur (1988 animated) Ben Hur (2003 animated) Ben Hur (2010 TV) Ben-Hur (2016) Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur (2016) keeps to the tried-and-trusted idea that the basic plot of the film is about the relationship between Judah Ben-Hur (played by John Huston) and his adopted brother Messala (played by Toby Kebbell). Several other characters with whom we are familiar from William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959) make their appearance here as well. The most important of these, at least from the standpoint of enticing the audience to see the film because it features an A-list actor, is the character Sheikh Ilderim (played by Morgan Freeman). Judah’s love interest Esther (played by the Iranian actress Nazanin Boniadi) also has a prominent role in the film, and is even elevated to the status of his betrothed wife, something only hinted at in the 1959 film.

382

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

I would like to suggest that the most distinctive feature of Timur Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur (2016) is the way that it re-images the role of Jesus within the narrative. There are six major scenes in which Jesus of Nazareth features within the film. What is perhaps most significant about these is that Jesus is here given a speaking role, something that did not happen in William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959). This is partly due to the insistence of the novel’s original author, Lew Wallace, who, out of his own religious convictions, forbade that the character of Christ say anything in the dramatic portrayals of his novel. Indeed, Wallace went so far as to forbid that the person of Jesus Christ be portrayed by an actor at all, insisting instead that his presence be limited to a stage light or similar disembodied visual representation. Wallace’s wishes had an enduring impact on the various cinematic adaptations of Ben-Hur. William Wyler’s film from 1959 did contain several scenes, which included an actor portraying Jesus (it happened to be the actor Claude Heater, who was uncredited), but his face was never seen, and certainly he never said anything within the film. Instead, what we were presented with in Wyler’s film were very powerful images of the effect that Jesus of Nazareth had upon other people (more on this below). In this key respect, Wyler’s film was a return to Lew Wallace’s principle of a non-speaking Jesus, a principle, which had been somewhat overturned by Fred Niblo’s Ben-Hur (1925) that does have a “speaking” Jesus. Of course, given the fact that Niblo’s was a film from the silent era, it would have been impossible for Jesus actually to have said anything. What we have instead is the silent-era equivalent of speech—intertitles—and there are five occasions where the words of Jesus are communicated through this vehicle. Meanwhile, the cartoon adaptation of Ben-Hur by Al Guest and Jean Mathiesen from 1988 returns in part to Wallace’s strict rules about the presentation of Jesus Christ, and gives us a silent Jesus. This cartoon version contains several scenes in which the face of Jesus is shown, but again he is never allowed to say anything in the film. Within Timur Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur the figure of Jesus of Nazareth is played by the up-and-coming Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro. As the film premiered in theaters in the United States on August 19, 2016, one cannot help but wonder whether such casting was deliberately designed to coincide with the fact that the 2016 Olympics in Rio took place between 2 and August 21, 2016. However, the casting of a Brazilian actor in the role has not been without its critics. Stephen Brown, for example, commenting on how Bekmambetov’s film compared to earlier versions of Ben-Hur, said in his 2016 review of the film in the Church Times: Earlier versions avoided close-ups of Jesus, let alone dialogue. Those men had real presence, whereas the moment Santoro opens his mouth, a Brazilian accent alienates him from everyone else. No longer the Man for Others, he is just—well— Other in a way that compromises his humanity.

Robbie Collin, a film critic for the Daily Telegraph, contrasts the staccato delivery of Santoro’s Jesus with the enigmatic presentation of the silent Jesus contained in Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959): “Unlike Wyler’s version, we both see Christ’s face and hear His voice delivering faintly Yoda-esque homilies about compassion and hope to the downtrodden” (2016).



Ben-Hur (2016): Jesus Finds a Voice

383

I propose to offer an exploration of Bekmambetov’s film in this respect, noting some of the ways that it relies on earlier cinematic versions of Ben-Hur, and some of the ways that it breaks new ground and brings fresh dimensions to the story by presenting us with a Jesus who speaks. We shall examine each of the six scenes in which Jesus gains a voice within Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur (2016). They will be handled in the order in which they occur within the film, although there is some inevitable cross-referencing and overlap between the scenes.

Scene 1: Jesus the carpenter speaks to Ben-Hur about love of neighbor The first instance in which Jesus speaks occurs just after Roman officials have pronounced judgment in the public market on a Jewish Zealot for his defiance against Roman authority. Judah Ben-Hur and his wife Esther have witnessed the pronouncement, as has the carpenter Jesus who is working in his shop. The following exchange takes place: Judah Ben-Hur: Ah, the Zealots! Esther: All they want is freedom. Judah Ben-Hur: And at what cost? If they have their way, they will bring the whole of Rome down on us. And then where will our freedom be? [To a stall seller as he wishes to purchase an item for Esther] How much? The Stall Seller: Five. [As Judah pays him] Thank you, my lord. Jesus of Nazareth [interrupting, as he planes a piece of wood]: There is freedom elsewhere. Judah Ben-Hur: Excuse me? Jesus of Nazareth: Love your enemies. Judah Ben-Hur: Love your enemies? That’s very progressive. Jesus of Nazareth: It’s the truth. God is love. He made us to share that love. Judah Ben-Hur: And where will your love be when the Romans turn their anger on the rest of us? Jesus of Nazareth: Hate and fear are lies that turn us against each other. Those are the lies that make us slaves. He has a path planned for you. Judah Ben-Hur: If he has a path planned for me, how am I better off than a slave? Jesus of Nazareth [To Judah, as he looks to Esther]: Why don’t you ask her?

This scene highlights Jesus’s status as an ordinary carpenter, taking his place alongside other Jewish traders plying their goods in the city marketplace. Similar scenes depicting Jesus as a carpenter are contained in Niblo’s Ben-Hur (1925), where the arm of Jesus is seen sawing a piece of wood, and in Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959) where a shot of the inside of Jesus’s carpentry shop in Nazareth is shown and the sound of him sawing a piece of wood can be heard. However, both of these films suggest that Jesus is a carpenter in his home town of Nazareth and have the scene take place in connection with Judah

384

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

Ben-Hur’s forced march from Jerusalem to the sea in order to be made a galley slave; along the journey the prisoners pass through Nazareth. Bekmambetov’s film, in contrast, has this initial encounter between Judah and Jesus take place in Jerusalem. In fact, Bekmambetov’s Jesus is never depicted as being anywhere but in Jerusalem or its environs; the Nazareth connection so beloved of earlier Ben-Hur films is here abandoned.

Scene 2: Jesus offers a cup of water to Judah The second instance in which Jesus speaks occurs as Judah Ben-Hur is shackled and is being led away to serve as a slave on a Roman galley. Judah is knocked to the ground by one of the Roman soldiers, and his wife Esther, who is in the crowd, attempts to bring a cup of water to her husband, pleading that the soldier show mercy. The soldier pushes her away and Jesus emerges from the crowd, coming face-to-face with the Roman soldier. Jesus takes the cup of water from her hands and bends down to offer it to Judah. They exchange the following words: Jesus of Nazareth [as he lifts Judah’s head and brings the cup to his lips]: Drink! Judah Ben-Hur [after he drinks]: Thank you! Jesus of Nazareth: You would do the same. [He tries to encourage Judah and helps him to his feet, saying] Get up, Judah!

Jesus’s statement “You would do the same” is vaguely reminiscent of the so-called Golden Rule of Mt. 7:12 (“Do to others what you want them to do to you.”). It suggests that Jesus anticipated that Judah would do the same for him if their positions were reversed, something which, as it turns out, is exactly the case. The visual image of Jesus leaning over Judah Ben-Hur to give him the cup of water is used as a flashback at two later points in the film. Both of these occur in highly dramatic episodes in Judah’s life, one as he is rowing in the Roman galley and the other during the chariot race with Messala. The image of Jesus offering Judah a cup of cold water is one of the most powerful scenes in most of the film versions of Ben-Hur, and it is firmly anchored in Lew Wallace’s original novel. The importance of the “cup of cold water” has long been recognized as an essential vehicle of the plot, particularly within Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959), which has a number of related scenes in which Judah’s drinking of water is depicted (Kreitzer 2013). Gordon Thomas notes the importance of water within the film, arguing that it serves as a visual expression of the spiritual struggle within Judah Ben-Hur, which lies at the heart of the story. Thomas ([2006] 2014) sees the motif of water as representing a redemptive healing force, or, as it appears more often in the film, the equating of water and the quenching of physical thirst to Jesus (or the power of Jesus) and the quenching of spiritual thirst.

That is not to say that every film version of Ben-Hur slavishly follows the traditional line in presenting the crucial encounter between Jesus and Judah Ben-Hur. Thus,



Ben-Hur (2016): Jesus Finds a Voice

385

Steve Shill’s Ben Hur (2010) provides us with a creative variation on the image of Jesus offering Judah a cup of cold water. As Judah is being led away from Jerusalem by the Roman soldiers to be a galley slave, he stumbles and falls to the ground. Judah is struck by one of the soldiers as Jesus comes out of the crowd to help him to his feet. Jesus says to Judah, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The two separate as a soldier ushers Jesus away and Judah continues on to his fate. Jesus’s words to Judah are of course taken from Lk. 23:34 where they are spoken by Jesus to his Father concerning those engaged in crucifying him. The saying of Jesus from the cross is one of the most powerful declarations about the need for forgiveness, and when it is transplanted to this scene involving Judah’s unjust treatment at the hands of Messala and his Roman conspirators, it is given added narrative significance. It is an image that is used later in the film in flashbacks designed to heighten the theme of forgiveness. Thus, when Judah, as the adopted son of Quintus Arrius, returns to Jerusalem from his exile, he momentarily stops along the road to listen to a man preaching to his band of disciples. The preacher is, of course, Jesus and the substance of his preaching are words drawn largely from Matthew (16:20-21; 5:38-40, 41, 43-44). In the midst of Jesus’s preaching (between Mt. 5:40 and 5:41) the flashback of Jesus’s words to Judah in Jerusalem (“Forgive them for they know not what they do”) is shown on the screen as if it is being recalled by Judah. This declaration of Jesus about forgiveness also appears later in the film as part of the depiction of the passion and crucifixion (more on this below)

Scene 3: Jesus of Nazareth interrupts the stoning of a man The third instance in which Jesus speaks occurs during the stoning of a man by a mob of angry Jews as some Roman officials, including Messala and the governor Pontius Pilate, look on. Jesus pleads with the mob and puts himself between the crowd and the man being stoned. The following words are heard: Jesus of Nazareth: Don’t! Please don’t! This man is your neighbor. The Torah tells us love your neighbor as we love ourselves. Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! [He lifts the man being stoned from the ground, and turns to address the crowd] Hate, anger, fear. Those are lies they use to turn you against each other. When you set aside the hate they force you to carry, that’s when you know love is our true nature. Pontius Pilate [to Messala as they look on]: Do you see what is happening here? Mark my words, Messala, this is the poison. That man offers the people something more and calms them with compassion. This Jesus of Nazareth is more dangerous than all of the Zealots combined.

The specific contrast between Jesus’s message of love and compassion and the Zealots’ message of violence and hatred against Rome runs through the film. As Wilkinson (2016) puts it: Ben-Hur’s main focus is how the way of Jesus presents a path that threatens the powerful, challenges the violent, and models radical compassion. Christ’s way

386

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

challenges two extremes: the desire of the Romans and their colluders for peace at the cost of liberty, and the desire of the zealots for liberty no matter the bloodshed.

The political struggle between the subjugated Jewish people and their Roman oppressors is also a staple in the earlier film versions of Ben-Hur, but it was never focused on the activities of the Zealots as it is here. This is no doubt a reflection of the fact that the Zealots are now recognized by biblical scholars to have been a significant Jewish sectarian movement in the first century CE. In other words, Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur (2016) attempts to update our understanding of the complexity of the political world of Jesus’s day. In this sense it is following in the tradition of a number of “Jesus films” in which the Zealot movement featured as an important plot point. One of the first “Jesus” films to do this was Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth (1977) in which both Barabbas and Judas Iscariot were identified as Zealots. The Zealot idea seems to have fallen on fertile ground, as there are plans afoot for developing a film based on Reza Aslan’s bestselling book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (2013). At the same time, while Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur (2016) can be applauded for including the Zealots in the narrative, this is done at the expense of the Jewish priests and Pharisees who are absent and play no part in the story of Jesus’s death within the film. In this respect Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur (2016) is following the lead of Niblo’s Ben-Hur (1925), which similarly downplays the role of the Jewish authorities in the trial and condemnation of Jesus, preferring simply to state in an intertitle that Jesus was handed over by Pilate “to the mob” (see Scodel 2013: 326 on this point).

Scene 4: Jesus is arrested by the Jewish authorities The fourth instance in which Jesus speaks occurs as he is arrested by the Jewish authorities in the Garden of Gethsemane. During the mêlée Peter draws his sword and strikes one of the people involved, whom Jn 18:10 identifies as Malchus the servant of the high priest. At this point Jesus intervenes and speaks: Jesus [exhorting Peter to refrain from violence]: Peter! Peter! No trouble, not from any of you! Those who live by the sword, will die by the sword.

The words of Jesus here are a re-working of Mt. 26:51-52. This is the only time in any of the Ben-Hur films that this particular couplet is used. It does emphasize once again the nonviolent message of Jesus, which is so central to the film. Other Ben-Hur films do have an equivalent scene to this, passages in which Jesus challenges the path of violence and the use of the sword. For example, in Bill Kowalchuk’s Ben Hur (2003) there is a depiction of Jesus’s arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. As the arresting authorities surround Jesus, his disciple Peter draws his sword from his belt and strikes one of the Roman soldiers on his right ear, which Jesus immediately heals. Jesus then exhorts Peter with the words: “Put up thy sword into thy sheath. The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” This represents a departure from the gospel narratives where it is the Jewish high priest’s servant who is struck by Simon Peter, not



Ben-Hur (2016): Jesus Finds a Voice

387

a Roman soldier (see Mt. 26:51/Mk 14:47/Lk. 22:50/Jn 18:10). The amalgamation of the exhortation to Peter that he sheathe his sword with the image of Jesus drinking the cup prepared by his Father is based on Jn 18:10-11. The significance of the reference to the “cup” is not to be missed and readily links back to the “cup of cold water” motif we have suggested is so important in the Ben-Hur story. The nonviolent message of Jesus is given further weight in Kowalchuk’s film by a subsequent conversation between Jesus and Judah Ben-Hur. As Jesus is led away by a squad of Roman soldiers, he is accompanied by Judah and the following exchange takes place: Judah: Master, do you go of your own will? Tell me. For I will gather an army of soldiers to save you! Jesus: Go, my son. It is my Father’s will.

With this dismissal Jesus completely rejects the idea of an armed intervention to save him from his fate. The nonviolent message of Jesus is also emphasized in Niblo’s Ben-Hur (1925) where there is a scene in which Judah forces his way through the crowd watching Jesus carry his cross along the Via Dolorosa. As Judah comes to the front of the crowd, he looks at Jesus, draws his sword from his belt, and raises it in a gesture of defiance. An intertitle is then shown, which reads: “O King, two legions of fighting men are coming! Each blow to you will be avenged a thousandfold!” This is then quickly followed by another intertitle, which reads: “And a voice came to him saying: ‘My Kingdom is not of this world. Put up thy sword, for the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.’” The intertitle suggests that this was a revelation given privately to Judah himself, which helps explain why the intertitle does not include a biblical reference (it is a montage of Jn 18:36, Mt. 26:52, and Lk. 9:56). This is the only time in the film that the words of Jesus are spoken to, and heard by, Judah.

Scene 5: Judah offers Jesus a cup of water as he is led away to be crucified The fifth instance in which Jesus speaks occurs as he is carrying his cross on the way to his crucifixion on Golgotha. Jesus falls down under the weight of the cross, and Judah, one of the onlookers in the crowd, moves forward and, seeing a well with drinking cups, takes a cup and attempts to offer it to Jesus. A Roman soldier tries to stop this act of kindness and the following words are heard: Judah Ben-Hur [offering the cup of water to Jesus who is lying face down in the dirt under the weight of the cross]: Drink. Please drink! Roman soldier: No water for him! [He strikes Judah with his whip, knocking him to the ground] No water for him! Jesus of Nazareth [as he exhorts Judah not to strike the Roman soldier with a rock he has picked up from the ground]: No, Judah! My life . . . I give it of my own free will.

388

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

This scene is, of course, intended to recall the earlier episode in the film where Jesus offered a cup of water to Judah as he was being led away by Roman soldiers to become a galley slave. The reciprocal offering of a drink of water is a pivotal feature of Lew Wallace’s novel (as Kreitzer 1993 argues), and it is faithfully depicted in four of the seven Ben-Hur films, with two others opting for a narrative equivalent. In fact, the only Ben-Hur film which does not contain the “cup of cold water” motif, or a narrative equivalent, is Morey and Olcott’s Ben Hur (1907). This is hardly surprising given that Jesus does not appear at all within the film, either as a disembodied light or a visual effect of any sort. Meanwhile, Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959) is perhaps the best example of a deliberate linking together of the “cup of cold water” scenes in order to bring Judah and Jesus into narrative proximity. Richard Walsh goes so far as to argue that this allows us to see Judah as a Christ figure within the film. As Walsh states: The 1959 film offers an elaborate sequence of references to the cup of water that Jesus gives to Judah on his way to the galleys. . . . The film uses this water motif to connect the twinned stories and to parallel the two characters. (2016: 140)

Two Ben-Hur films have very interesting narrative equivalents to the “cup of cold water” motif. For example, the animated version of Ben-Hur from 1988 directed by Al Guest and Jean Mathiesen does depict Jesus offering a cup of water to Judah as he is being led away by the Roman soldiers, but it does not have the reciprocal scene where Judas offers water to Jesus on the Via Dolorosa. Instead, what it has as its equivalent is Judah being present at the crucifixion and offering Jesus a drink from Esther’s headscarf, which is dipped into a bucket of water and extended on a staff to Jesus as he hangs on the cross. As Judah does this he explains to Esther, “I will comfort him, as he did me.” This is based on Mt. 27:48/Mk 15:36/Jn 19:19 where it is recorded that some unnamed bystander(s) offered Jesus vinegar on a sponge put on a reed or a branch of hyssop. Meanwhile, as noted above, Steve Shill’s Ben Hur (2010) has a very different version of the “cup of cold water” motif. In this case, Jesus’s offering Judah a drink of water was replaced by Jesus offering him an exhortation to be forgiving (“Forgive them for they know not what they do”). A portion of this scene between Judah and Jesus is also injected as a flashback during the depiction of Jesus as he moves along the Via Dolorosa. Judah and Esther are part of the crowd who witness Jesus struggling to carry the cross-beam on his shoulder. A Roman soldier strikes Jesus with a whip and he falls to the ground with the cross-beam on top of him. Judah pushes his way forward and lifts the cross-beam away from Jesus and helps him to his feet. The two look into each other’s eyes and Jesus says to Judah, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The scene between Judah and Jesus is then intercut with two flashbacks involving Judah’s relationship with Messala: the first from when they were both children and embraced each other and said goodbye as Messala was being summoned by his father to Rome; the second from when Messala the mature soldier came back from Rome to Jerusalem and arrogantly treated Judah with disdain: Messala says, “Forgive me, you know half my performance is to convince myself,” and the two again embrace. Judah then picks up the cross-beam and helps to hoist it once again upon the shoulder of



Ben-Hur (2016): Jesus Finds a Voice

389

Jesus, who proceeds on his journey out of the city gates to Golgotha. All of this, of course, is designed to link the words of Jesus about forgiveness to the healing of the fractured relationship between Judah and Messala. This is precisely what happens as Judah then goes to the bedside of the mangled body of Messala, who is clinging to life in the hopes that his childhood friend would come before he dies. The two men are reconciled as Messala asks for forgiveness and Judah grants it, just before Messala dies.

Scene 6: Jesus of Nazareth’s sayings from the cross The sixth instance in which Jesus speaks occurs as he is hanging on the cross with an assembled body of Roman soldiers, Jewish authorities, and disciples and followers gathered around witnessing the spectacle. In fact, within the film Jesus says three of the seven sayings recorded by the four gospel writers; the first two of these come from the Gospel of Luke (23:34, 42-43), and the third comes from the Gospel of John (19:30). The following exchange takes place as part of the crucifixion scene: Thief on the Cross: Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus of Nazareth [to the Thief]: Today, you will be with me in paradise. [As he looks down upon the crowd gathered to watch the crucifixion] Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. [The camera cuts to the face of Judah who looks on. Images of Judah’s boyhood races with Messala and the conclusion of the chariot race are shown as flashbacks] Jesus of Nazareth [looking again at the crowd]: It is finished.

The actor playing the thief on the cross is Moises Arias and he is given the name Dismas in the film credits. This is an acknowledgment of the fact that he is so named in the Gospel of Nicodemus (10:2). The exchange between the thief on the cross and Jesus is unusual in that it does not occur in any other Ben-Hur film. It does inject the element of compassion and forgiveness into the depiction of the crucifixion and helps set up the second of Jesus’s declarations from the cross, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” It is worth noting that this is not the first time that Jesus’s words as recorded in Lk. 23:34 appear in film versions of Ben-Hur. In fact, the words appear as an intertitle in Fred Niblo’s Ben-Hur (1925) as part of the crucifixion sequence. The intertitle separates two scenes in which four Roman soldiers are shown throwing dice to determine who will get to keep Jesus’s clothes. Effectively this means that Jesus’s words are a prayer to the Father that the Roman soldiers may be forgiven, which is exactly the same point that is made in Shill’s Ben Hur (2010), although in Shill’s version the scene in which this saying is spoken takes place on the Via Dolorosa rather than on Golgotha. Similarly, Bill Kowalchuk’s Ben Hur (2003) also has Jesus speak the words about forgiveness from Lk. 23:34 as part of the depiction of the crucifixion. However, in this case the words of Jesus are spoken by Jesus as he looks down upon the crowd of witnesses below which are made up of mocking Jews and faithful disciples of Jesus, not Roman soldiers.

390

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

This is not to say that the words of Lk. 23:34 are completely missing from William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959). The saying does occur in the film, but it is not spoken by Jesus himself. Rather it is said by Judah Ben-Hur to Esther as the two meet in the dilapidated Hur house shortly after the death of Jesus. Judah caresses Esther and the following exchange takes place: Judah: Almost at the moment he died I heard him say, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Esther: Even then? Judah: Even then. And I felt his voice take the sword out of my hand.

These are the final words spoken within the film and help to confirm its message that Jesus offers a vision of a nonviolent world in which forgiveness and love pervades. In its own way, Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur (2016) has an equivalent ending, although this time it is voiced by Sheikh Ilderim (Morgan Freeman) as we see images of the estranged brothers Judah and Messala embracing and saying to each other, “Forgive me.” Freeman’s final voiceover is: There were many miracles that day, and in the days that followed. As time passed, forgiveness and understanding had re-united the family. To give hope and promise for a better way, to fight the good fight, to finish the race, to keep the faith.1

However, it is worth noting that Timur Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur (2016) film is not the first time that cinematic adaptations of Ben-Hur depicted the reconciliation between Judah and Messala. Bill Kowalchuk’s Ben Hur (2003) has a scene in which Messala, who is crippled from the fateful chariot race, asks to join Judah’s army, which is being gathered to rescue Jesus from the Roman authorities. “Can you ever forgive me?” Messala asks Judah; the two then embrace. This helps set up the declaration by Jesus from the cross (“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”). In this case, Judah stands at the foot of the cross alongside his old adversary Messala, with whom he has been reconciled, and together the two embody the very idea of forgiveness of which Jesus speaks. The way in which Bekmambetov’s film attempts to give the character of Jesus a new direction and purpose by giving him a voice is arguably one of the most creative features of the film. In this sense Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur certainly breaks new ground. But all the credit that is accrued in this regard is, in the opinion of many viewers, compromised by the hurried and unimaginative ending of the film. The death of Jesus Christ on the cross is accompanied by miraculous wonders and healings, which owe much to Wyler’s film but are now somehow unconvincing for a twenty-first-century audience. As Stephen Holden, in a film review for the New York Times, put it: The movie pauses just long enough to observe the Crucifixion, which, like every other biblical element, comes across as a rushed, perfunctory nod to tradition, devoid of emotional or spiritual resonance. At the very end, it timidly tries to preach a message about revenge and forgiveness, but its heart just isn’t in it. Violence is its calling card.



Ben-Hur (2016): Jesus Finds a Voice

391

Timur Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur (2016) cost over $100,000,000 to make and it looks as if it will prove to be a financial flop (it only brought in $11,000,000 on its opening weekend in the United States). In addition, the film has been slated by most film critics. Peter Travers’s 2016 review of the film in Rolling Stone is entitled “A Remake Disaster of Biblical Proportions” and within it he says that the “latest version of the chariot-racing New Testament epic is one old-school cinematic car wreck.” Still, that should not take anything away from Bekmambetov’s attempt to give us a fresh interpretation of a cinematic Ben-Hur Jesus who finds his voice and preaches a message of non-violence and forgiveness. Indeed, Roma Downey, who along with her husband Mark Burnett, was one of the executive producers of the film, is quoted as saying (in McNeilly 2016): Woven into the fabric of it is the story of faith. It is because Judah Ben-Hur has an encounter with Jesus Christ that Judah’s heart is open. There, at the foot of the cross, we see his hardness drop away.2

Notes 1 This is a creative montage of biblical imagery drawn from 1 Tim. 6:12 and 1 Cor. 9:24. According to Ong (2016) 1 Timothy 6:12 was the scriptural inspiration behind the film for executive producers Roma Downey and Mark Burnett. 2 Downey’s comments were made in the wake of the news that the scenes depicting Jesus within the film (amounting to fourteen minutes) were cut by the distributors United International Pictures in Malaysia in order to meet local legal requirements within the largely Muslim country.

Works cited Aslan, Reza (2013), Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, New York: Random House. Brown, Stephen (2016), “That Bit-part Saviour and That Chariot Race,” Church Times, No 8008, September 9: 22–23, 28. Collin, Robbie (2016), “Ben-Hur Review: Sincere Spectacle That Doesn’t Reinvent the Chariot Wheel,” The Telegraph, September 6. Available online: http://www.telegraph. co.uk/films/2016/09/06/ben-hur-review-sincere-spectacle-that-doesnt-reinvent-thechario/ (accessed October 8, 2016). Holden, Stephen (2016), “‘Ben-Hur’ Is a Savage Update for a New Generation,” The New York Times, August 18. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/movies/ ben-hur-review.html?_r=0 (accessed October 8, 2016). Kreitzer, Larry J. (1993), “Ben-Hur: The ‘Cup of (Cold) Water’ and the ‘I Thirst’ Saying of Jesus,” in Larry J. Kreitzer, The New Testament in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow, 44–66, Biblical Seminar Series, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic. Kreitzer, Larry J. (2013), “Ben-Hur (1959),” in Adele Reinhartz (ed.), Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films, 34–39, London and New York: Routledge. McNeilly, Claire (2016), “Roma Downey’s Ben-Hur Anguish as Scenes of Christ Cut,” Belfast Today, October 4. Available online: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/

392

T&T Clark Companion to the Bible and Film

entertainment/film-tv/news/roma-downeys-ben-hur-anguish-as-scenes-of-christcut-35100327.html (accessed October 8, 2016). Ong, Czarina (2016), “Find Out the Bible Verse That Helped Shape the Movie ‘Ben-Hur,’” Christianity Today, August 20. Available online: http://www.christiantoday.com/article/ find.out.the.bible.verse.that.helped.shape.the.movie.ben.hur/93536.htm (accessed October 8, 2016). Scodel, Ruth (2013), “The 1925 Ben-Hur and the ‘Hollywood Question,’” in Pantelis Michelakis and Maria Wyke (eds.), The Ancient World in Silent Cinema, 315–29, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomas, Gordon ([2006] 2014), “Getting it Right the Second Time: Adapting Ben-Hur for the Screen,” Bright Lights Film Journal, 52, May 2006; revised June 4, 2016. Available online: http://brightlightsfilm.com/getting-it-right-the-second-time-adapting-benhur-for-the-screen/#.WE3VcvkrLb0 (accessed October 8, 2016). Travers, Peter (2016), “A Remake Disaster of Biblical Proportions,” Rolling Stone, August 19. Available online: http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/ben-hur-moviereview-w435330 (accessed October 8, 2016). Walsh, Richard (2016), “Getting Judas Right: The 1925 Ben-Hur as Jesus Film and Biblical Epic,” in Barbara Ryan and Milette Shamir (eds.), Bigger Than Ben-Hur: The Book, Its Adaptations, and Their Audiences, 125–42, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Wallace, Lew (1880), Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, New York: Harper. Wilkinson, Alissa (2016), “Ben-Hur: A New Twist on the Tale of the Christ,” Christianity Today, August 17. Available online: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/augustweb-only/ben-hur.html (accessed October 8, 2016).

Filmography 12 Years a Slave (2013), Dir. Steve McQueen, USA: Fox Searchlight. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012), Dir. Timur Bekmambetov, USA: 20th Century Fox. A.D. The Bible Continues (2015), [TV program] Dirs. Ciaran Donnelly, Tony Mitchell, Rob Evans, Brian Kelly, and Paul Wilmshurst, USA: NBC. Adams æbler (Adam’s Apples 2005), Dir. Anders Thomas Jensen, DNK: Nordisk. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Dir. Michael Curtiz, USA: Warner Bros. Agora (2009), Dir. Alejandro Amenábar, ESP: 20th Century Fox. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001), Dir. Steven Spielberg, USA: Warner Bros. Alien (1979), Dir. Ridley Scott, USA: 20th Century Fox. American Psycho (2000), Dir. Mary Harron, USA: Lions Gate. El amor brujo (Love, the Magician 1986), Dir. Carlos Saura, ESP: Filmayer. L’amore (Ways of Love 1948), Dir. Roberto Rossellini, ITA: Finecine. Animated Stories from the Bible (1992–95), [Video Release] Dir. Richard Rich, USA: Nest Family Entertainment and Rich Animation Studios. Antichrist (2009), Dir. Lars von Trier, DNK: Nordisk (USA: IFC). The Apocalypse (2000), [TV program] Dir. Raffaele Mertes, ITA/FRA/DEU/USA/UK: Lux Vide. Ararat (2002), Dir. Atom Egoyan, CAN: Alliance Atlantis. Arcipelaghi (Archipelagos 2001), Dir. Giovanni Columbu, ITA/FRA: Ipotesi Cinema. As Above, So Below (2014), Dir. John Erick Dowdle, USA: Universal. Atalia (Athaliah 1964), [TV program] Dir. Mario Ferrero, ITA: RAI. Athalie (Athaliah 1910), Dirs. Albert Capellani and Michel Carré, FRA: Pathé. Athalie (Athaliah 1962), [TV program] Dir. Roger Kahane, FRA: RTF. Atti degli apostoli (Acts of the Apostles 1969), [TV program] Dir. Roberto Rossellini, ITA/ FRA: RAI. Avatar (2009), Dir. James Cameron, USA: 20th Century Fox. Ayyub e Payambar (Job the Prophet 1993), [TV program] Dir. Farajollah Salahshoor, IRN: Mostazafan & Janbazan Foundation. Ba’al: The Storm God (2008), [TV program] Dir. Paul Ziller, CAN/USA: The Sci-Fi ­Channel. Back to the Future (1985), Dir. Robert Zemeckis, USA: Universal Pictures. Back to the Future Part II (1989), Dir. Robert Zemeckis, USA: Universal Pictures. Back to the Future Part III (1990), Dir. Robert Zemeckis, USA: Universal Pictures. Barabbas (1953), Dir. Alf Sjöberg, SWE: Sandrews. Barabbas (1961), Dir. Richard Fleischer, USA: Columbia. Bat Yiftach (Jephtah’s Daughter 1996), Dir. Einat Kapach, Israel: Ma’ale School of Film & Television. The Beetle (1919), Dir. Alexander Butler, UK: Charles Urban Trading Co. Ben Hur (1907), Dirs. Harry T. Morey and Sidney Olcott, USA: Kalem. Ben-Hur (1959), Dir. William Wyler, USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

394 Filmography Ben Hur (1977), [SCTV TV program] Dir. Milad Bessada, CAN: Global. Ben-Hur (1988), [Video release] Dirs. Al Guest and Jean Mathieson, USA: Emerald City Productions. Ben Hur (2003), [Video release] Dir. Bill Kowalchuk Jr., USA: Goodtimes Entertainment. Ben Hur (2010), [TV program] Dir. Steve Shill, UK/CAN: Akkord Film Production GmbH. Ben-Hur (2016), Dir. Timur Bekmambetov, USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Ben-Hur: A Race to Glory (1992), [Video Release] Dir. Fernando Uribe, USA: CCC of America. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), Dir. Fred Niblo, USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The Bible . . . In The Beginning (1966), Dir. John Huston, USA/ITA: 20th Century Fox. The Bible (2013), [TV program] Dirs. Christopher Spencer, Crispin Reece, and Tony Mitchell, USA: The History Channel. The Big Fisherman (1959), Dir. Frank Borzage, USA: Buena Vista. The Big Gundown (La resa dei conti 1966), Dir. Sergio Sollima, ITA: Produzioni Europee Associati (USA: Columbia, 1968). The Big Lebowski (1998), Dirs. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, USA: Gramercy. The Big Sleep (1946), Dir. Howard Hawks, USA: Warner Bros. The Birth of a Nation (1915), Dir. D. W. Griffith, USA: Epoch. The Birth of a Nation (2016), Dir. Nate Parker, USA: Fox Searchlight. The Black Hole (1979), Dir. Steven Spielberg, USA: Buena Vista. Blade Runner (1982), Dir. Ridley Scott, USA: Warner Bros. Bodas de sangre (Blood Wedding 1981), Dir. Carlos Saura, ESP: Emiliano Piedra. The Body (2001), Dir. Jonas McCord, USA: Lions Gate. Body Heat (1981), Dir. Lawrence Kasdan, USA: Warner Bros. Boksuneun naui geot (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance 2002), Dir. Park Chan-wook, KOR: CJ. Entertainment. Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Dir. Arthur Penn, USA: Warner Bros./Seven Arts. The Book of Esther (2013), Dir. David A. R. White, USA: Pure Flix Entertainment. The Book of Life (1998), Dir. Hal Hartley, FRA/USA: Haut et Court. Brazil (1985), Dir. Terry Gilliam, UK/USA: Universal. Breaking the Waves (1996), Dir. Lars von Trier, DNK: Argus (USA: October). Bronenosets Potyomkin (The Battleship Potemkin 1925), Dir. Sergei Eisenstein, USSR: Goskino. Bruce Almighty (2003), Dir. Tom Shadyac, USA: Universal. A Bullet for the General (Quién sabe? 1966), Dir. Damiano Damiani, ITA: M.C.M. (USA: Embassy Pictures, 1968). Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 1920), Dir. Robert Wiene, DEU: Decla-Bioskop AG. Cabiria (1914), Dir. Giovanni Pastrone, ITA: Itala Film. Carmen (1983), Dir. Carlos Saura, ESP: C.B. Films S.A. Casablanca (1942), Dir. Michael Curtiz, USA: Warner Bros. Chappie (2015), Dir. Neill Blomkamp, RSA/USA: Columbia. Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog 1929), Dir. Luis Buñuel, FRA: Les Grands Films Classiques. Chinatown (1974), Dir. Roman Polanski, USA: Paramount. Chinjeolhan geumjassi (Lady Vengeance 2005), Dir. Park Chan-wook, KOR: CJ Entertainment. Chocolat (2000), Dir. Lasse Hallström, UK/USA: Miramax.

Filmography

395

Le Christ marchant sur les flots (Christ Walking on the Water 1899), Dir. Georges Méliès, FRA: Georges Méliès. Christus (1916), Dir. Giulio Antamoro, ITA: Società Italiana Cines. Civilization (1916), Dir. Thomas Ince, USA: Triangle. Color of the Cross (2006), Dir. Jean-Claude La Marre, USA: Rocky Mountain Pictures. Color of the Cross 2: The Resurrection (2008), [Video Release] Dir. Jean-Claude La Marre, USA: Warner Home Video. Dahong denglong gaogaogua (Raise the Red Lantern 1991), Dir. Zhang Yimou, CHN: China Film. Dancer in the Dark (2000), Dir. Lars von Trier, DNK: Angel (USA: Fine Line Features). Daniel dans la fosse aux lions (Daniel in the Lions’ Den 1905), Dir. Lucien Nonguet, FRA: Pathé. The Dark Knight (2008), Dir. Christopher Nolan, USA: Warner Bros. David and Bathsheba (1951), Dir. Henry King, USA: 20th Century Fox. The Da Vinci Code (2006), Dir. Ron Howard, USA: Columbia. Dayamayudu (1987), Dir. Vijay Chander, IND: no company listed. Day of Triumph (1954), Dirs. John T. Coyle and Irving Pichel, USA: Century Films. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Dir. Robert Wise, USA: 20th Century Fox. Death Wish (1974), Dir. Michael Winner, USA: Paramount. Death Wish II (1982), Dir. Michael Winner, USA: Columbia. Death Wish III (1985), Dir. Michael Winner, USA: Cannon Film. Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), Dir. Delmer Daves, USA: 20th Century Fox. Detour (1945), Dir. Edgar Ulmer, USA: Producers Releasing Corporation. I dieci comandamenti (The Ten Commandments 1945), Dir. Giorgio Walter Chili, ITA: Fincine. The Dig (2015), [TV program] Dirs. Gideon Raff et al, USA: USA Network. Dirty Harry (1971), Dir. Don Siegel, USA: Warner Bros. Django Unchained (2012), Dir. Quentin Tarantino, USA: The Weinstein Company. Dogma (1999), Dir. Kevin Smith, USA: Lions Gate. Dogville (2003), Dir. Lars von Trier, DNK: Egmont Entertainment (USA: Lions Gate, 2004). Double Indemnity (1944), Dir. Billy Wilder, USA: Paramount. Dracula (1931), Dir. Tod Browning, USA: Universal. Duck, You Sucker! (Giù la teste, A Fistful of Dynamite 1971), Dir. Sergio Leone, ITA: Euro International Film (USA: United Artists, 1972). Ebrahim Payambar (Abraham the Prophet 2008), [TV program] Dir. Mohammad-Reza Varzi, IRN: IRIB Channel 2. Ernst & lyset (1996), Dirs. Tomas Villum Jensen and Anders Thomas Jensen, DNK: Det Danske Filminstitut. Esther (The Marriage of Esther 1910), Dir. Louis Feuillade, FRA: Gaumont. Esther (1913), Dir. Henri Andréani, FRA: Pathé. Esther (1916), Dir. Maurice Elvey, UK: Jury Films. Esther (1986), Dir. Amos Gitai. ISR: Facets. Esther and the King (1960), Dirs. Raoul Walsh and Mario Bava, ITA/USA: 20th Century Fox. Es wäre gut, daß ein Mensch würde umbracht für das Volk (Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John’s Passion 1991), Dir. Hugo Niebeling, DEU: Filmverlag der Autoren. The Eternal Jew (1933), Dir. George Roland, USA: Jewish Talking Picture. Evan Almighty (2007), Dir. Tom Shadyac, USA: Universal.

396 Filmography Ex Machina (2015), Dir. Alex Garland, UK/USA: Universal Pictures. Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), Dir. Ridley Scott, USA: 20th Century Fox. The Exorcist (1973), Dir. William Friedkin, USA: Warner Bros. Face to Face (Faccia a faccia 1967), Dir. Sergio Sollima, ITA: Produzioni Europee Associati (USA: Peppercorn-Wormser Film Enterprises, 1976). The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Dir. Anthony Mann, USA: Paramount. Father Noah’s Ark (1933), Dir. Wilfred Jackson, USA: United Artists. Le festin de Balthazar (Balthazar’s Feast 1905), Dir. Lucien Nonguet, FRA: Pathé. Fig Leaves (1926), Dir. Howard Hawks, USA: Fox Film. Fils de la Sunamite (Son of the Shunammite 1911), Dir. Louis Feuillade, FRA: Gaumont. A Fistful of Dollars (Per un pugno di dollari 1964), Dir. Sergio Leone, ITA: Unidis (USA: United Artists, 1967). Five Broken Cameras (2011), Dirs. Emad Burnad and Guy Davidi, PAL/ISR: Kino Lorber. Five Million Years to Earth (1968), Dir. Roy Ward Baker, USA: 20th Century Fox. For a Few Dollars More (Per qualche dollaro in più 1965), Dir. Sergio Leone, ITA: Produzioni Europee Associati (USA: United Artists, 1967). Forbidden Planet (1956), Dir. Fred M. Wilcox, USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Forms of Love Trilogy (1990), Dir. Rudolf Thome: Das Mikroskop (The Microscope 1988), DEU: Moana-Film. Der Philosoph (The Philosopher 1989), DEU: Moana-Film. Sieben Frauen (Seven Women 1989), DEU: Moana-Film. From the Manger to the Cross (1912), Dir. Sidney Olcott, USA: Kalem. Der Galiläer (The Galilean 1921), Dir. Dimitri Buchowetzki, DEU: Express-Films Co. GmbH. A Gamble in Souls (1916), Dir. Walter Edwards, USA: Triangle. The Gatekeepers (2012), Dir. Dror Moreh, ISR: Sony Pictures Classics. Das Geheimnis (The Secret 1995), Dir. Rudolf Thome, DEU: Filmverlag der Autoren. Das Gespenst (The Ghost 1982), Dir. Herbert Achternbusch, DEU: no company listed. Ghostbusters (1984), Dir. Ivan Reitman, USA: Columbia. Gladiator (2000), Dir. Ridley Scott, USA: DreamWorks. Godspell (1973), Dir. David Greene, USA: Columbia. Golgotha (1935), Dir. Julien Duvivier, FRA: Eduard Weil. Gone with the Wind (1939), Dir. Victor Fleming, USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Il buono, il bruto, il cattivo 1966), Dir. Sergio Leone, ITA: Produzioni Europee Associati (USA: United Artists, 1967). The Gospel of John (2014), [Video release] Dir. David Batty, Lumo Project, UK/USA: Netflix. The Gospel of Luke (2016), [Video release] Dir. David Batty, Lumo Project, UK/USA: Big Book Media. The Gospel of Mark (2016), [Video release] Dir. David Batty, Lumo Project, USA: Big Book Media. The Gospel of Matthew (2016), [Video release] Dir. David Batty, Lumo Project, UK/USA: Big Book Media. I grandi condottieri (The Great Leaders/ Gideon and Samson 1965), Dirs. Marcello Baldi and Francisco Pérez-Dolz, ITA/SPA: San Pablo Films. The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible (1986-1992), [Video Release] Dirs. Don Lusk and Ray Patterson, USA: Hanna-Barbera Productions. Queen Esther (1992). The Greatest Heroes and Legends of the Bible (1998), [Video Release] Dir. William R. Kowalchuk, USA: Tundra.

Filmography

397

The Greatest Heroes of the Bible (1978-79), [TV program] Dir. James L. Conway, USA: NBC. The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Dir. George Stevens, USA: United Artists. The Green Pastures (1936), Dirs. Marc Connelly and William Keighley, USA: Warner Bros. Gun Crazy (1950), Dir. Joseph H. Lewis, USA: United Artists. Hail Caesar! (2016), Dirs. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, USA: Universal. Hamlet 2 (2008), Dir. Andrew Fleming, USA: Focus. Hearts of the World (1918), Dir. D. W. Griffith, USA: Paramount. Hell’s Hinges (1916), Dir. Charles Swickard, USA: Triangle. Herr im Haus (Master in the House 2000), Dir. Gudrun Falke, DEU: Hamburger Filmwerkstätten e.V. Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire 1987), Dir. Wim Wenders, FRG/FRA: BasisFilm-Verleih GmbH/Argos. Hiob (Job 1918), Dir. Kurt Matull, DEU: Ideal-Film Berlin. Historie de Judas (Story of Judas 2015), Dir. Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, FRA: Potemkin Films. History of the World, Part 1 (1981), Dir. Mel Brooks, USA: 20th Century Fox. Honggaoliang (Red Sorghum 1987), Dir. Zhang Yimou, CHN: Xi’an Film. The Hot Spot (1990), Dir. Dennis Hopper, USA: Orion. Huozhe (To Live 1994), Dir. Zhang Yimou, CHN: Shanghai Film. I Beheld his Glory (1952), Dir. John T. Coyle, USA: Cathedral Films. L’inconnu (The Unknown 2004), Dir. Juliette Soubrier, FRA: La Femis. Independence Day (1996), Dir. Roland Emmerich, USA: 20th Century Fox. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Dir. Steven Spielberg, USA: Paramount. Inglourious Basterds (2009), Dir. Quentin Tarantino, USA: The Weinstein Company. I.N.R.I. (Crown of Thorns 1923), Dir. Robert Wiene, DEU: Bayerische Film. Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916), Dir. D.W. Griffith, USA: Triangle. I, Robot (2004), Dir. Alex Proyas, USA: 20th Century Fox. The Island (2005), Dir. Michael Bay, USA: DreamWorks. The Island of Lost Souls (1933), Dir. Erie Kenton, USA: Paramount. The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), Dir. John Frankenheimer, USA: New Line. It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie [TV program] (2002), Dir. Kirk R. Thatcher, USA: NBC. Jaël et Sisera (Jael and Sisera 1911), Dir. Henri Andréani, FRA: Pathé. Jeremiah (1998), [TV program] Dir. Harry Winer, ITA/DEU/USA: Lux Vide. Jeremias (Jeremiah 1922), Dir. Eugen Illés, DEU: Spera-Film. Jeruzalem (2015), Dirs. Doron Paz and Yoav Paz, ISR: Epic Pictures. Jesus (The Jesus Film) (1979), Dirs. Peter Sykes and John Krish, USA: Warner Bros./The Jesus Film Project. Jesus (1999), [TV program] Dir. Roger Young, ITA/USA: RAI/Columbia. Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), Dir. Norman Jewison, USA: Universal. Jesus Christ Superstar (2000), [TV program] Dirs. Gale Edwards and Nick Morris, Great Performances, UK: Universal Home Entertainment. Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (2001), Dir Lee Demarbre, CAN: Odessa Filmworks. Jesus Cries (2015), Dir. Brigitte Maria Mayer, DEU: Anatomie Titus Productions. Jesus—Der Film (1986), Dir. Michael Brynntrup, DEU: no company listed. Jesus liebt mich (Jesus Loves Me 2012), Dir. Florian David Fitz, DEU: Warner Bros. Jésus de Montréal (Jesus of Montreal 1989), Dir. Denys Arcand, CAN: Cineplex Odeon. Jesus of Nazareth (1977), [TV program] Dir. Franco Zeffirelli, ITA/UK/USA: RAI/NBC.

398 Filmography La Jetée (1962), Dir. Chris Marker, FRA: Argos. Je vous salue, Marie (Hail Mary 1985), Dir. Jean-Luc Godard, FRA: Sara Films. Jezile (Son of Man 2006), Dir. Mark Dornford-May, RSA: Spier Films. Joseph and His Brethren (1930), Dir. Adolph Gartner, USA: no company listed. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1999), [Video release] Dir. David Mallet, UK: Polygram Filmed Entertainment. Joseph in the Land of Egypt (1932), Dir. George Roland, USA: Guaranteed Pictures. Joseph: King of Dreams (2000), [Video release] Dirs. Rob LaDuca and Robert C. Ramirez, USA: DreamWorks. Judith of Bethulia (1914), Dir. D. W. Griffith, USA: Biograph. Jurassic Park (1993), Dir. Steven Spielberg, USA: Universal. Kabirdas (2003), Dir. Raju, V.V., IND: Keerthi Chakri Productions. Karunamayudu (Man of Compassion, a.k.a., Daya Sagar, Ocean of Mercy 1978), Dir. A. Bheem Singh, IND: Dayspring. Kaze no tani no Naushika (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind 1984), Dir. Hayao Miyazaki, JPN: Toei. Killing Jesus (2015), [TV program] Dir. Christopher Menaul, USA: National Geographic Channel. King David (1985), Dir. Bruce Beresford, UK/USA: Paramount. Kingdom of Heaven (2005), Dir. Ridley Scott, USA: 20th Century Fox. The King of Kings (1927), Dir. Cecil B. DeMille, USA: Pathé Exchange. King of Kings (1961), Dir. Nicholas Ray, USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. King Solomon’s Mines (1950), Dirs. Compton Bennett and Andrew Marton, USA: MetroGoldwyn-Mayer. Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Dir. Robert Aldrich, USA: United Artists. Last Days in the Desert (2015), Dir. Rodrigo García, USA: Broad Green Pictures. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Dir. Martin Scorsese, USA: Universal. The Law in These Parts (2011), Dir. Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, PAL/ISR: Noga Communications. Liebeskonzil (Love Council 1982), Dir. Werner Schroeter, DEU: Atlas Film. Life of St. Paul (1938), Dir. Norman Walker, UK: Religious Film Society. Life of St. Paul (1949), Dir. John T. Coyle, USA: Cathedral Films. Lincoln (2012), Dir. Steven Spielberg, USA: Touchstone The Lion King (1994), Dirs. Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, USA: Buena Vista. A Little Bit of Heaven (2011), Dir. Nicole Kassell. USA: Millennium Entertainment. Living Bible Series (1951–58), [TV program] USA: Family Films. Acts of the Apostles (1957), Dir. Edward Dew. Jesus the Christ (1951), Dir. Edward Dew. The Old Testament (1958), Dir. Edward Dew. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Dir. Peter Jackson, USA/NZL: New Line. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Dir. Peter Jackson, USA/NZL: New Line. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), Dir. Peter Jackson, USA/NZL: New Line. Lost in Space (1965–68), [TV Program] Creator: Irwin Allen, USA: CBS. Lot in Sodom (1933), Dirs. James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber, USA: no company listed. The Machinist (2004), Dir. Brad Anderson, ESP: Filmax. Il maestro e Margherita (The Master and Margarita 1972), Aleksander Petrovic, ITA/YUG: Euro International Film.

Filmography

399

Magnolia (1999), Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, USA: New Line Cinema. The Maltese Falcon (1941), Dir. John Huston, USA: Warner Bros. The Manchester Passion (2006), [TV program] Dir. Phil Chilvers, UK: BBC. Manderlay (2005), Dir. Lars von Trier, DNK: Distributionsselskabet (USA: IFC). Mandingo (1975), Dir. Richard Fleischer, USA: Paramount. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, USA: Paramount. Manticore (2005), [TV program] Dir. Tripp Reid, USA: The Sci-Fi Channel. Marian-e Moghaddas (Saint Mary 1997), [TV program] Dir. Shahriar Bahrani, IRN: Irib channel 1. The Market of Vain Desire (1916), Dir. Reginald Barker, USA: Triangle. Mary (2005), Dir. Abel Ferrara, ITA/FRA/USA: Wild Bunch. The Matrix (1999), Dirs. Lana and Lilly Wachowski (as the Wachowski Brothers), USA: Warner Bros. Mensch, Jesus! (Man, Jesus! 1999), [TV program] Dir. Cornelius Meckseper, DEU: Südwestrundfunk. Mesih (The Messiah 2007), Dir. Nader Talebzadeh, Iran: no production company listed. Il messia (The Messiah 1975), Dir. Roberto Rossellini, ITA/FRA: Proncinex/Film 3. Metropolis (1927), Dir. Fritz Lang, DEU: Paramount-Ufa-Metro-Verleihbetriebe GmbH. Michael (1996), Dir. Nora Ephron, USA: New Line Cinema. Mission to Mars (2000), Dir. Brian de Palma, USA: Buena Vista. Mononoke-hime (Princess Mononoke 1997), Dir. Hayao Miyazaki, JPN: Toho. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Dirs. Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam. UK: EMI Films. Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), Dir. Terry Jones, UK: Cinema International. Moonrise Kingdom (2012), Dir. Wes Anderson, USA: Focus Features. Moses the Lawgiver (1974), [TV program] Dir. Gianfranco De Bosio, ITA/UK/USA: RAI/ ITC/NBC. Murder, My Sweet (1944), Dir. Edward Dmytryk, USA: RKO Radio. Nemrud (Nimrod 1979), Dir. Muharrem Gürses, TUR: Murat Film. Nephi & Laban (2003), [Video Release] Dirs. Dennis Agle Jr. and Aaron Edson, USA: Sound Concepts. The New Media Bible: Genesis (1979), Dir. John Heyman, USA: The Genesis Project. The New Media Bible: The Gospel According to St. Luke (1979), Dirs. John Heyman, John Krish, and Peter Sykes, USA: The Genesis Project. Noah (2014), Dir. Darren Aronofsky, USA: Paramount. Noah’s Ark (1928), Dir. Mikhály Kertész (Michael Curtiz), USA: Warner Bros. Noah’s Ark (1999), [TV program] Dir. John Irvin, USA/DEU: Hallmark Entertainment. North by Northwest (1959), Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Nosferatu (1922). Dir. F. W. Murnau, DEU: Prana-Film GmbH. Notorious (1946), Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, USA: RKO Radio. Nymphomaniac: Vol. I (2013), Dir. Lars von Trier, DNK: Nordisk (USA: Magnolia 2014). Nymphomaniac: Vol. II (2013), Dir. Lars von Trier, DNK: Nordisk (USA: Magnolia 2014). Oh, God! (1977), Dir. Carl Reiner, USA: Warner Bros. Okytabr (October: Ten Days That Shook the World 1927), Dirs. Grigori Aleksandrov and Sergei Eisenstein, USSR: Sovkino. Oldeuboi (Oldboy 2003), Dir. Park Chan-wook, KOR: Show East. Once Upon a Time in the West (C’era una volta il West 1968), Dir. Sergio Leone, ITA: Euro International Film (USA: Paramount, 1969). One Night with the King (2006), Dir. Michael O. Sajbel, USA: 8x Entertainment.

400 Filmography Out of the Past (1947), Dir. Jacques Tourneur, USA: RKO Radio. Pale Rider (1985), Dir. Clint Eastwood, USA: Warner Bros. Paris is Burning (1990), Dir. Jennie Livingstone, USA: Art Matters. The Passion (2008), [TV program] Dir. Michael Offer, UK: BBC. La Passion de Jeanne D’Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc 1928), Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, FRA: Gaumont. The Passion of the Christ (2004), Dir. Mel Gibson, USA: Newmarket. The Passion Play – Christ and the Disciples Plucking Corn (1903), Dir. Siegmund Lubin, USA: S. Lubin. The Passion Play – Christ Calling Zaccheus from the Tree (1903), Dir. Siegmund Lubin, USA: S. Lubin. The Passion Play of Oberammergau (1898), Dir. Henry C. Vincent, USA: Edison Manufacturing. Paul (2000), [TV program] Dir. Roger Young, ITA/USA/UK/FRA/GER: RAI/Lux Vide. Pilatus und andere – Ein Film für Karfreitag (Pilate and Others – A Movie for Good Friday 1972), [Television program] Dir. Andrzej Wajda, DEU: ZDF. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Dir. Tay Garnett, USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Potiphar’s Wife (1931), Dir. Maurice Elvey, UK: First National Pathé. The Power of the Resurrection (1958), Dir. Harold D. Schuster, USA: Modern Sound Pictures. Pleasantville (1998), Dir. Gary Ross, USA: New Line Cinema. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016), Dir. Burr Steers, USA: Sony. The Prince of Egypt (1998), Dirs. Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, and Simon Wells, USA: DreamWorks. La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV (The Rise of Louis XIV 1966), [Television program] Dir. Roberto Rossellini, ITA: ORTF. The Prodigal (1955), Dir. Richard Thorpe, USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Prometheus (2012), Dir. Ridley Scott, USA: 20th Century Fox. The Quakeress (1913), Dir. Raymond B. West, USA: Mutual. Quatermass and the Pit (1958-59), [TV program] Dir. Rudolph Cartier, UK: BBC. Quatermass and the Pit (1967), Dir. Roy Ward Baker, UK: Warner-Pathé. Queen Esther (1948), Dir. John T. Coyle, USA: Cathedral Films. Queimada (Burn! 1969), Dir. Gillo Pontecorvo, ITA: PEA. Quo Vadis? (1951), Dir. Mervyn LeRoy, USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Dir. Steven Spielberg, USA: Paramount. Rashomon (1950), Dir. Akira Kurosawa, JPN: Daiei Motion Picture. The Red Tent (2014), [TV program] Dir. Roger Young, USA: Lifetime Television. Rei Davi (King David 2012), [TV program] Dir. Edson Spinello, BRA: Rede Record. Requiescant (1967), Dir. Carlo Lizzani, ITA: Cineriz. The Revenant (2015), Dir. Alejandro González Iñarritu, USA: 20th Century Fox. La ricotta (Curd Cheese 1962), Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, ITA/FRA: Cineriz. The Robe (1953), Dir. Henry Koster, USA: 20th Century Fox. Roots (1977), [TV Program] Dirs. Marvin J. Chomsky, John Erman, David Greene, and Gilbert Moses, USA: ABC. Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Dir. Roman Polanski, USA: Paramount. La salamandra del deserto (Tamar, Wife of Er 1970), Dir. Riccardo Freda, ISR/DEU/ITA: Avis-Filmverleih. Salomé (1908), Dir. Albert Capellani, FRA: Pathé Frères. Salome (1908), Dir. J. Stuart Blackton, USA: Vitagraph.

Filmography

401

Salomé (1910), Dir. Ugo Falena, ITA: Pathé Frères. Salome (1918), Dir. J. Gordon Edwards, USA: Fox. Salome (1923), Dir. Charles Bryant, USA: Malcolm Strauss. Salome (1953), Dir. William Dieterle, USA: Columbia. Salomé (2002), Dir. Carlos Saura, ESP: Zebra. Samson (1936), Dir. Maurice Tourneur, FRA: Paris Film. Samson and Delilah (1949), Dir. Cecil B. DeMille, USA: Paramount. Samson und Delilah (1922), Dir. Alexander Korda, AUT: Corda Film. The Searchers (1956), Dir. John Ford, USA: Warner Bros. Seduto alla sua destra (Black Jesus 1968), Dir. Valerio Zurlini, ITA: Ital-Noleggio ­Cinematografico. Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited Away 2001), Dir. Hayao Miyazaki, JPN: Toho. Les sept péchés capitaux: La luxure (The Seven Deadly Sins: Lust 1910), Dir. Louis ­Feuillade, FRA: Gaumont. Shane (1953), Dir. George Stevens, USA: Paramount. The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Dir. Frank Darabont, USA: Columbia. She (1965), Dir. Robert Day, UK: Warner-Pathé. The Shepherd King (1923), Dir. J. Gordon Edwards, USA: Fox. The Sign of the Cross (1932), Dir. Cecil B. DeMille, USA: Paramount. The Silver Chalice (1954), Dir. Victor Saville, USA: Warner Bros. The Sixth Day (2000), Dir. Roger Spottiswoode, USA: Columbia. Slaves of Babylon (1953), Dir. William Castle, USA: Columbia. Sodom e Gomorrah (1962), Dir. Robert Aldrich, FRA/ITA/USA: Pathé Consortium Cinéma/20th Century Fox. Sodom und Gomorrha (1922), Dir. Mikhály Kertész (Michael Curtiz), DEU/AUT: ­Universum Film. Son of God (2014), Dir. Christopher Spencer, USA: 20th Century Fox. Sopralluoghi in Palestina per il vangleo secondo Matteo (On Location in Palestine 1965), Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, ITA: Ripley. Spartacus (1960), Dir. Stanley Kubrick, USA: Universal. Sri Shirdi Saibaba Mahathyam (1986), Dir. K. Vasu, IND: no company listed. Stagecoach (1939), Dir. John Ford, USA: United Artists. Star Trek: The Next Generation: “The Chase” (1993), [TV program] Dir. Jonathan Frakes, USA: Paramount. Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace (1999), Dir. George Lucas, USA: 20th Century Fox. Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones (2003), Dir. George Lucas, USA: 20th Century Fox. Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith (2005), Dir. George Lucas, USA: 20th Century Fox. Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope (1977), Dir. George Lucas, USA: 20th Century Fox. Star Wars: Episode V—The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Dir. Irvin Kershner, USA: 20th Century Fox. Star Wars: Episode VI—Return of the Jedi (1983), Dir. Richard Marquand, USA: 20th Century Fox. Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens (2015), Dir. J. J. Abrams, USA: Walt Disney. The Stepford Wives (1975), Dir. Bryan Forbes, USA: Columbia. Stigmata (1999), Dir. Rupert Wainwright, USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The Story of Ruth (1960), Dir. Henry Koster, USA: 20th Century Fox.

402 Filmography Strangers on a Train (1951), Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, USA: Warner Bros. Die Sünderin (The Sinner 1951), Dir. Willi Forst, DEU: Donau-Filmgesellschaft. Su Re (The King 2012), Dir. Giovanni Columbu, ITA/SRD: Sacher Distribuzione. The Sweet Hereafter (1997), Dir. Atom Egoyan, CAN: Alliance Communications. The Ten Commandments (1923), Dir. Cecil B. DeMille, USA: Paramount. The Ten Commandments (1956), Dir. Cecil B. DeMille, USA: Paramount. Teorema (1968), Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, ITA: Euro International Film. Testament: The Bible in Animation (1996), [TV program] UK: S4C: Daniel (1996), Dir. Lioudmila Koshkina. Elijah (1996), Dir. Derek W. Hayes. Jonah (1996), Dir. Valeriy Ugarov. Ruth (1996), Dir. Derek W. Hayes. Thor (2011), Dir. Kenneth Branagh, USA: Paramount. Time Bandits (1981), Dir. Terry Gilliam, UK: HandMade Films. Titanic (1997), Dir. James Cameron, USA: 20th Century Fox. Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro 1998), Dir. Hayao Miyazaki, JPN: Toho. Toumingzhuang (Warlords 2007), Dirs. Peter Ho-Sun Chan and Wai Man Yip, CHN: ARM. Le tout nouveau testament (The Brand New Testament 2015), Dir. Jaco Van Dormael, BEL/ FRA: Le Pacte. Transformers (2007), Dir. Michael Bay, USA: Paramount. The Truman Show (1998), Dir. Peter Weir, USA: 1998. La última cena (The Last Supper 1976), Dir. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Cuba: Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industrias Cinematográficos. The Unbeliever (1918), Dir. Alan Crosland, USA: George Kleine. Il vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 1964), Dir. Pier Paolo ­Pasolini. ITA: Titanus Distribuzione. Il vecchio testamento (The Old Testament 1962), Dir. Gianfranco Parolini, ITA/FRA: ­Cinematografica Associati. VeggieTales (1993–2015), [Video Release] Dirs. Mike Nawrocki and Phil Vischer, USA: Big Idea Entertainment. Esther, The Girl Who Became Queen (2000), Dir. Mike Nawrocki. La vie du Christ (La Naissance, la vie et la mort du Christ (The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ 1906), Dir. Alice Guy, FRA : Gaumont. La vie de Moïse (1905), no director listed; FRA: Pathé. La vie et passion de notre seigneur Jésus Christ (The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ 1898), Dirs. Georges Hatot and Louis Lumière, FRA: Lumière. La Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ (The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ 1902–05), Dirs. Ferdinand Zecca and Lucien Nonguet, FRA: Pathé. La Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ (The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ 1907), Dir. Ferdinand Zecca, FRA: Pathé. La vie et passion de notre seigneur Jésus Christ (The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ 1913), Dir. Maurice André Maître, FRA: Pathé. The Visual Bible: Acts (1994), Dir. Regardt van den Bergh, RSA: Visual Bible International. The Visual Bible: The Gospel of John (2003), Dir. Philip Saville, CAN/UK: Visual Bible International. The Visual Bible: Matthew (1993), Dir. Regardt van den Bergh, RSA: Visual Bible ­International. Walker (1987), Dir. Alex Cox, USA: Universal. Wall-E (2008), Dir. Andrew Stanton, USA: Walt Disney Studios.

Filmography

403

Westworld (1973), Dir. Michael Crichton, USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Westworld (2016), [TV program], Creators: Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, USA: HBO. Wholly Moses! (1980), Dir. Gary Weis, USA: Columbia. The Wild Bunch (1969), Dir. Sam Peckinpah, USA: Warner Bros./Seven Arts Woman in the Window (1944), Dir. Fritz Lang, USA: RKO Radio. Wunderbare Tage (Miraculous Days 2002), Dir. Matthias Kiefersauer, DEU: Andrea ­Wetzel Filmproduktion. Year One (2009), Dir. Harold Ramis, USA: Columbia. Yingxiong (Hero 2002), Dir. Zhang Yimou, CHN: Beijing New Picture. Yogi Vemana (1988), Dir. Rao C. S. R., IND: no company listed. The Young Messiah (2016), Dir. Cyrus Nowrasteh, USA: Focus. Yousof e Payambar (Joseph the Prophet 2008), Dir. Farajollah Salahshoor, IRN: Cima Film Center. Xiuchundao (Brotherhood of Blades 2014), Dir. Yang Lu, CHN: China Film.

Film Index 12 Years a Slave  223, 228–31, 234 A.I.: Artificial Intelligence  52, 55, 56, 57 Alien  50, 317–18 An Andalusian Dog. See Un Chien Andalou Arcipelaghi  346, 355 As Above, So Below  66 Avatar  159 Ba’al The Storm God  63, 66, 67, 70 Back to the Future  158 The Beetle  66 Ben-Hur (1907)  373, 381, 388 Ben-Hur (1925)  373, 381, 382, 383–4, 386, 387, 389 Ben-Hur (1959)  279, 304, 362, 369–71, 372, 373, 374, 375, 376, 377, 378, 381–2, 383–4, 388, 390 Ben-Hur (1988)  373, 381, 382, 388 Ben-Hur (1992)  373–4 Ben Hur (2003)  374, 381, 386–7, 389, 390 Ben Hur (2010)  374, 381, 385, 388–9 Ben-Hur (2016)  374, 378, 381–91 The Bible (1966)  13, 278, 279, 280, 285, 318 The Bible (2013)  1, 13, 14, 51, 282, 318 The Big Gundown  153 The Big Lebowski  77 The Big Sleep  24 The Birth of a Nation (1915)  124, 125, 126, 223, 231 The Birth of a Nation (2016)  223, 231–4, 235 The Black Hole  53 Black Jesus. See Seduto alla sua destra Blade Runner  25, 54, 57, 317 The Body  68, 69, 70 Body Heat  25, 27, 28, 32

Boksuneun naui geot (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance)  93–4, 98, 101, 102 Bonnie and Clyde  225, 234 The Book of Esther  322–3, 325–30, 331, 333 The Book of Life  146 Braveheart  233, 235 Brazil  25 Breaking the Waves  261, 262 Brotherhood of Blades. See Xiuchundao Bruce Almighty  76, 291, 318 A Bullet for the General  153–4, 155 Cabiria  124, 125, 127 Chappie  53 Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog)  176 Chinatown  25, 27, 28 Chinjeolhan geumjassi (Lady Vengeance)  95, 96, 98, 101 Chocolat  77 Civilization  127–31, 132, 133, 136, 374 Color of the Cross  220, 282 Dancer in the Dark  261, 262 The Da Vinci Code  41, 68, 193 The Day the Earth Stood Still  53 Demetrius and the Gladiators  279, 317 Detour  24, 28, 33 The Dig  66 Django Unchained  158, 223, 226–8, 234 Dogma  76, 195, 268, 318 Dogville  260–4, 265–7, 268 Double Indemnity  24, 33 Dracula (1931)  64, 65, 374–5 Duck, You Sucker!  151, 154–5 Ernst & lyset  147 Esther  330–2, 333

Film Index Esther and the King  322–30, 331, 332, 333 Evan Almighty  75, 288, 289, 291–3, 296, 297, 318 Ex Machina  54–5, 56 Exodus: Gods and Kings  14, 44, 188, 195, 278, 311–18, 319, 320 The Exorcist  62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68–70 Face to Face  153, 155 A Fistful of Dollars  151–3, 155–8, 160 Five Broken Cameras  115, 120–1 For a Few Dollars More  151–3, 154, 155–8, 160 Forbidden Planet  53 From the Manger to the Cross  13, 81–3, 88, 90, 275, 374 Der Galiläer  139, 148 The Gatekeepers  120 Das Geheimnis (The Secret)  143–4, 149 Das Gespenst (The Ghost)  147–8, 149, 150 The Ghost. See Das Gespenst Ghostbusters  63, 66 Gladiator  43, 317–18 Godspell  42, 88–9, 90, 281 Golgotha  346, 355 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly  151–3, 154, 155–8, 160 The Greatest Story Ever Told  1, 38–40, 84–8, 89, 90, 91, 280, 336, 342, 344, 355, 356, 377 The Green Pastures  279, 318 Gun Crazy  24 Hail, Caesar!  378 Hamlet 2  187, 195 Hearts of the World  131 Hero. See Yingxiong Herr im Haus (Master in the House)  147 Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire)  76, 144, 265 The Hot Spot  24 I, Robot  53, 57 L’inconnu (The Unknown)  146–7 Independence Day  375 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade  66

405

I.N.R.I.  132–6, 137, 139, 149 Intolerance  83, 124–9, 132, 133, 136, 242, 275, 277, 284, 374 The Island  56–7 The Island of Dr. Moreau  53 The Island of Lost Souls  52–3, 56 Jeruzalem  62–3, 66 Jesus  110, 113 Jesus Christ Superstar  42, 83, 88–90, 187, 188, 189, 190, 192–3, 194, 276, 281, 287, 344 Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter  75 Jesus Cries  139, 141–3, 149 Jesus—Der Film  148, 149 Jesus liebt mich (Jesus Loves Me)  144–6, 149 Jesus Loves Me. See Jesus liebt mich Jésus de Montréal  40–2, 46, 91, 146, 281, 287 Jesus of Nazareth  91, 285, 350, 386 La Jetée  240 Jezile (Son of Man)  89, 91, 210, 211–21, 313, 319, 355 Judith of Bethulia  124, 125, 274, 275, 277 Jurassic Park  56 Karunamayudu  104, 110–13 Kaze no tani no Naushika (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind)  99–100, 101–2 The King. See Su Re Kingdom of Heaven  317, 319, 320 The King of Kings (1927)  4, 45, 83–8, 89, 90, 91, 278, 374 King of Kings (1961)  1, 83, 84–8, 90, 91, 242, 278, 280, 316, 348, 355, 374, 377 King Solomon’s Mines  65 Kiss Me Deadly  25, 27 Lady Vengeance. See Chinjeolhan geumjassi Last Days in the Desert  335, 336–8, 341, 342, 344 The Last Temptation of Christ  44, 83, 106–7, 189, 190, 194–5, 242, 253, 281, 313, 316, 319, 336, 342, 355 The Law in These Parts  115, 119–21 The Lord of the Rings  43, 105–6, 381 Lost in Space  53

406 Film Index Magnolia  76–7 The Maltese Falcon  24, 29, 32 Man, Jesus!. See Mensch, Jesus! Manderlay  261, 265, 269 Manticore  64 Master in the House. See Herr im Haus The Matrix  256, 343 Mensch, Jesus! (Man, Jesus!)  146 Il messia  144, 355 Metropolis  54, 56 Il miracolo  144 Miraculous Days. See Wunderbare Tage Mission to Mars  50–2, 57 Mononoke-hime (Princess Mononoke)  99–101, 102 Monty Python’s Life of Brian  74–6, 91, 151, 152, 160, 188, 342 Murder, My Sweet  24 My Neighbor Totoro. See Tonari no Totoro La Naissance, la vie et la mort du Christ (aka La vie du Christ)  80–1, 91, 374 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. See Kaze no tani no Naushika Noah  2, 14, 51, 188–9, 190–2, 193, 195, 196, 278, 282, 288, 289–91, 292, 293, 296, 297, 316 North by Northwest  26 Nosferatu  65 Notorious  24 Oldboy. See Oldeuboi Oldeuboi (Oldboy)  94–5, 98, 101 Once Upon a Time in the West  151–2, 154, 157–8, 160 One Night with the King  188, 322–30, 331, 332, 333 The Passion  282, 346, 355 La Passion de Jeanne D’Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc)  243, 356 The Passion of the Christ  1–2, 4, 13, 36, 45, 46, 70, 91, 105, 107, 109, 110, 174, 176–7, 181–4, 190, 193, 194, 196, 217, 278, 282, 316, 343, 346, 348, 350, 351, 355, 356, 376 The Passion of Joan of Arc. See La Passion de Jeanne D’Arc

Pilate and Others—A Movie for Good Friday. See Pilatus und andere—Ein Film für Karfreitag Pilatus und andere—Ein Film für Karfreitag (Pilate and Others—A Movie for Good Friday)  139–41, 149 Pleasantville  77 The Postman Always Rings Twice  24 The Prince of Egypt  4, 188, 189, 190, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 300–8, 313–14, 316, 318, 319 Princess Mononoke. See Mononokehime Prometheus  50–2, 54, 57, 58, 319 Quatermass and the Pit  50–2, 57, 58 Quo Vadis?  279, 362 Raiders of the Lost Ark  60–1, 67, 70 Requiescant  153–4 The Revenant  251, 254–6, 257 La ricotta  355 The Robe  279, 362, 377 Rosemary’s Baby  63 Salome (1953)  279, 358–62, 364, 366 Salomé (2002)  358, 362–5, 366, 367 Samson and Delilah  188, 278, 279, 285 The Secret. See Das Geheimnis Seduto alla sua destra (Black Jesus)  220, 313 Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited Away)  100, 101–2 The Shadow of Nazareth  79 Shane  251–3, 256, 257 The Sign of the Cross  279 The Sixth Day  55–7 Son of God  1, 14, 355 Son of Man. See Jezile Spartacus  317, 377 Spirited Away. See Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi Star Trek: The Next Generation  50–2, 57 Star Wars  53 Star Wars: The Force Awakens  374–5 The Stepford Wives  54 Stigmata  65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70 Strangers on a Train  25, 28, 32 Su Re (The King)  282, 346–55, 356

Film Index The Sweet Hereafter  198, 199, 200, 201–7 Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. See Boksuneun naui geot The Ten Commandments (1923)  278, 314 The Ten Commandments (1956)  4, 36, 43, 151, 188, 194, 196, 242, 278, 279, 287, 301, 313, 316, 377 Teorema  144 Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro)  100, 101–2 Toumingzhuang (Warlords)  96–7, 98, 101–2 Transformers  53 The Unbeliever  131, 132 The Unknown. See L’inconnu Il vangelo secondo Matteo  88, 89–90, 243, 284, 313, 342, 348, 349, 355

407

La Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ  80–1, 276, 318, 374 La vie du Christ. See La Naissance, la vie et la mort du Christ Wall-E  159 Warlords. See Toumingzhuang Westworld  54 Wholly Moses!  75–6 Wings of Desire. See Der Himmel über Berlin Woman in the Window  24 Wunderbare Tage (Miraculous Days)  147 Xiuchundao (Brotherhood of Blades)  97–8, 101–2 Yingxiong (Hero)  96, 97, 98, 101–2

Modern Author Index Achternbusch, H.  147–8, 149, 150 Agamben, G.  251, 256 Ahmed, S.  175, 184, 205–6, 208 Aichele, G.  12, 14, 15, 73, 77 Aichele, G. and Walsh, R.  4 Altman, R.  21 Anderson, W.  288, 293, 297 Anker, R.  168–9, 170 Anzaldúa, G.  341–2 Apostolos-Cappadona, D.  360, 366 Appadurai, A.  108 Arcand, D.  40–2, 46 Aronofsky, D.  14, 188, 190, 191, 282, 288, 297 Ashkenazi  42, 43 Audi, R.  376, 377 Aune, D.  21, 29, 30, 33

Bordwell, D.  169–71, 172 Borges, J.  4, 78, 122, 268 Boyd, M.  203 Brinkema, E.  171, 174–5, 178–9, 180, 182 Brintnall, K.  190, 193, 195–6 Britt, B.  116, 303, 306, 308, 319 Brottman, M.  182–3 Brown, S.  382 Brown, W.  199–200 Browning, R.  204–5, 208 Brynntrup, M.  148 Buckland, W.  166–7 Bulgakov, M.  139, 140, 141 Burnette-Bletsch, R.  2, 3–4, 5, 6, 54, 79–80, 167, 168, 172, 287, 318 Butler, J.  115–16, 118

Babington, B. and Evans, P.  279, 316, 319 Bach, A.  2, 14, 188, 361 Bachelard, G.  337, 343 Ball, E.  229, 230, 231 Banks, R.  200–7 Banksy  268, 343–4 Barker, M. and Mathjis, E.  104, 105–6, 107, 110 Barthes, R.  38, 169, 180, 240, 242 Baugh, L.  220, 248, 354 Bazin, A.  165, 169, 240 Beavis, M.  183, 200–2, 208 Bekmambetov, T.  381, 382, 383, 384, 386, 390, 391 Bellour, R.  172 Benjamin, W.  108–9, 122, 239, 240, 247, 251 Bhabha, H.  211 Blake, R.  7 Blake, W.  198, 207 Boillat, A. and Robert, V.  81, 91, 275–6 Borde, R. and Chaumeton, É.  24, 29

Campbell. T.  155–6, 157 Čapek, K.  52–3 Caputo, J.  338 Carroll, N.  61–2, 69, 172, 184 Carter, M.  252, 253, 254, 257 Cawelti, J.  254 Chander, V.  110–11 Chattaway, P.  14, 273–4, 285, 313 Collin, R.  382 Collins, J.  22, 23, 29, 30, 31, 33 Colman, F.  169 Columbu, G.  346–55, 356 Copier, L.  167 Crace, J.  335, 338–41 Crossan, D.  83, 268 Crossley, J.  151, 152, 156, 159, 160 Cunningham, V.  232, 235 Curtiz, M. (Kertész )  277, 284 Damiani, D.  153–4 Davis, R.  108–9, 111, 113 De La Torre, M.  342

Modern Author Index Deleuze, G.  14, 172, 175, 179, 238–47, 311, 319 Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F.  122, 243–6 DeMille, C.  36, 37, 43, 45, 81, 83–8, 89, 151, 177–8, 242, 277, 279, 284, 308, 314, 316, 374 Dennett, D.  49, 51 Derrida, J.  175, 208, 250–1, 257, 338 Dodd, C.  268 Doré, G.  283, 301 Dornford-May, M.  212, 214 Douglas, M.  62 Drew, W.  124, 125, 126, 136 Dyer, R.  24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 33 Ebert, R.  95, 98, 168, 261, 266, 268 Edelman, L.  193, 198–202, 203, 204, 205–6, 207, 208 Egoyan, A.  40, 198, 199, 200, 203, 204, 207 Elsaesser, T. and Hagener, M.  166, 169 Eschrich, J.  193, 194, 195 Exum, C.  3, 14, 283 Fisher, A.  152, 153, 155, 158, 160 Fisher. M.  159 Fitz, F.  144–6 Flaubert, G.  360–1, 364, 365, 366 Foucault, M.  178, 179, 243, 244 Fraser, P.  377 Frayling, C.  151–2, 155, 156, 157, 160 Freud, S.  182, 315–16 Friesen, D.  80, 81, 112–13 García, R.  335, 337, 341, 342, 343 Gauntier, G.  81 Genette, G.  14, 212–13, 300 Geoghegan, J.  117, 118 Gibson, M.  1–2, 13, 14, 36, 45, 46, 70, 105, 107, 109, 110, 174, 177–8, 181, 183–4, 190, 194, 217, 233, 235, 282, 343, 348, 350, 351, 376 Gitai, A.  330–2, 333 Glissant, É.  211, 213 Goffman, E.  116 Greene, D.  88 Griffith, D. W.  83, 124–9, 131, 132, 133, 231, 242, 275, 284, 374 Griffiths, A.  376 Guy, A.  80–1, 91, 282

409

Halberstam, J.  206–7 Hark, I.  371, 376, 379 Harnack, A.  130 Hartley, H.  146 Heard, C.  303, 306, 308 Hemingway, E.  147–8 Heston, C.  371, 377 Hoberman, J.  268 Holden, S.  390 Holdt, J.  265–6 Hoover, S.  105, 112 Horsley, R.  250 Hoskins, J.  104, 109, 111 Ince, T.  127–31, 132, 133, 136, 374 Jameson, F.  25, 33, 43 Jasper, D.  341, 344 Jewison, N.  89 Jung, U. and Schatzberg, W.  132, 134, 136, 137 Kael, P.  225–6 Kafka, F.  24, 78, 268 Kaufman, G. and Libby, L.  264–5 Kawin, B.  67, 69, 182 Kelemen, D.  51 Kinnard, R. and Davis, T.  274, 366 Koch, K.  22, 29, 31 Kopytoff, I.  105, 108 Kowalchuk, B.  386, 387, 389, 390 Kozlovic, A.  248–9 Kracauer, S.  121, 169 Kreitzer, L.  2, 4, 287–8, 379, 384, 388 Krish, J.  110 Lang, J.  278, 285 Larsen, J.  313, 314 Leitch, T.  14, 300 Leone, S.  151–60 Lizzani, C.  153 Lyden, J.  167–8, 171, 174, 376 McGeough, K.  64, 65, 66, 67, 189 McKinney, D.  226, 230, 234 MacPherson, J.  83 McQueen, S.  223, 224, 228–31, 234 Malone, P.  42, 184, 189 Marker, C.  240–1

410 Modern Author Index Martin, J. and Ostwalt, C.  1, 7 Mathews, S.  131, 135, 136 Mayer, B.  139, 141–3, 149 Meckseper, C.  146 Méliès, G.  276–7 Miles, M.  15, 224, 377 Mitchell, W.  342 Miyazaki, H.  93, 98–102 Moore, S.  182 Moore, S.  2 Naremore, J.  24, 33 Niblo, F.  382, 383, 386, 387, 389 Nida, E.  211 Ogihara-Schuck, E.  100, 102 Olcott, S.  13, 81–3, 88, 90, 388 Page, M.  13, 14, 79 Panshin, A. and Panshin, C.  51, 52, 53, 54 Park, C.  93–6, 98, 101, 102 Parker, N.  223, 224, 231–4, 235 Pasolini, P.  80, 88, 89–90, 144, 240, 243, 342, 343, 344, 348, 349, 355 Peckinpah, S.  225 Perkowitz, S.  54, 56 Plate, S.  36, 45, 174, 177, 184, 220 Polzin, R.  115–18, 122 Prince, S.  61, 65, 224, 225, 228 Quinn, M.  300, 308 Ray, N.  83–8, 90, 242, 348 Rauschenbusch, W.  130–1 Reinhartz, A.  3, 14, 15, 39, 40–1, 43, 46, 177, 189, 248, 297, 298, 316, 361–2, 371 Renan, E.  360–1 Rindge, M.  4, 7, 172, 265, 268 Rodowick, D.  165–6, 171 Rohrer-Walsh, P.  189, 303, 308 Rose, P.  43 Rosegger, P.  132–5, 137 Rosenstone, R.  36, 37–40, 45, 46 Rossellini. R.  40, 46, 144 Runions, E.  191–2, 196, 282 Rushton, R. and Bettinson, G.  165–6 Russell, J.  301, 302, 304, 305–6, 318

Said, E.  63–4 Sanders, J.  5, 14, 300 Sarris, A.  166 Saunders, F.  122 Saura, C.  358, 362–5, 366, 367 Schaefer, D.  176, 183–4 Schatz, T.  251 Schrader, P.  15, 172 Scorsese, M.  83, 106–7, 189, 242, 319, 337, 350 Scott, R.  14, 25, 43, 50, 284, 311, 313, 316, 317–18, 319, 320 Seesengood, R.  253, 257, 269 Seesengood, R. and Koosed, J.  250, 257 Segal, R.  375, 376 Seigworth, G.  175, 184 Sepinwall, A.  234–5 Shadyac, T.  288, 291 Shaviro, S.  178 Shepherd, D.  15, 80, 125, 132, 136, 275, 284, 366, 374 Sherwood, Y.  2 Shill, S.  385, 388, 389 Sykes, P.  110 Slocum, D.  224 Smith, Morton  21, 250 Smith, Murray  377 Sobchack, V.  15, 61 Sollima, S.  153 Solomon, J.  279–80, 284, 372, 379 Staley, J.  79 Staley, J. and Walsh, R.  14, 83, 184 Stern, R., Jefford, C., and Debona, G.  39, 40, 42 Stevens, G.  38–40, 83, 84–8, 90, 342, 344 Stone, K.  194, 202, 208 Tarantino, Q.  158, 223, 224, 226–8, 230, 232, 234 Tatum, W.  39, 42, 84, 136, 184 Taves, B.  130, 131, 136 Taylor, M.  175–6 Thomas, G.  384 Thome, R.  143–4, 149 Thompson, T.  249 Tissot, J.  80, 81–2, 90, 283 Tompkins, J.  254 Twycross, M.  176–7

Modern Author Index Updike, J.  338–9, 341 Vander Stichele, C.  14, 358, 366 Venuti, L.,  211 Vijaychander. See Chander, V. Von Trier, Lars  260–2, 265–6, 268, 269 Wajda, A.  139–41, 149 Walkte, B.  199 Wallace, L.  285, 371–3, 374, 378, 381, 382, 384, 388 Walsh, R.  14, 15, 70, 84, 126, 127, 128, 136, 137, 184, 248, 250, 256, 257, 268, 279, 281, 312, 319, 373, 388 Watanabe, T.  303, 306, 308 Weinfeld, M.  117 Wells, P.  61, 62, 63, 64 West, G.  218, 221 White, H.  36, 38, 45

411

Wiene, R.  132–6, 139 Wilde, O.  283, 360–1, 362, 363, 364, 365, 366, 367 Wilken, R.  338 Wilkinson, A.  233–4, 385–6 Williams, J.  226, 227, 228, 234 Williams, T.  63, 64 Wood, M.  308, 311, 319 Wright, M.  36, 151, 168, 174, 297, 319 Wyler, W.  371, 381–2, 383, 384, 388, 390 Yacowar, M.  304, 306 Zecca, F.  80–1 Zhang, Y.  96 Žižek, S.  159 Zordan, D.  348, 351 Zwick, R.  132, 133, 134, 136, 139

Scripture Index Torah  246, 302, 303, 306, 385 Genesis  3, 49, 57, 284, 318 1  57 1-3  288 1:1-2:3  49, 51, 54, 56–7 1:26-31  55 1:26-27  49, 52, 54 1:28  49, 290, 291 2-4  312 2:4-3:24  49, 51, 54, 56–7, 76, 77, 78 3:16-19  101 4:22  289 5:3  52 6-9  76, 77, 78, 191, 288–9, 293, 295–7 6:1-4  289 6:5  289, 297 6:5-7:5  290 6:6  288 6:8  288 6:11  297 6:19  288 7:2  288 7:9  288 8:4  288 8:10  288 8:12  288 9  194 9:1  290 9:2  227 9:12-17  288 9:20  288 9:21  288 9:23-24  192 9:25  232 9:25-27  289 11:1-9  246, 280 18  312 19  278 32:24-32  312 34  192

Exodus  3, 4, 43–4, 189, 242, 287, 300, 301, 303, 304, 306, 308, 312, 313, 314, 316, 318 1:16  313 1:22  313 3  311–12, 315 3:2  312 3:14  312 3:20-22  311 4:21-23  311 4:24-26  190 6:1  311 6:6  311 7:3-5  311 7:4-11:10  311 11:1-3  313, 314 11:1-10  313 11:4-8  311, 313 12-13  313 12:12-13  311 12:29-30  313 12:29-32  311 13  313 14:19  313 19-20  312 20:18-21  312 23:20-21  312–13 23:22-23  313 23:23  313 24:7  319 31:18  319 32:15-16  319 33:2  313 33:11  312 33:20-23  312 34:1  319 34:27  319 34:27-28  311 Numbers  117 32-34  117

Scripture Index Deuteronomy  115–18, 119, 120, 121, 122 2:11-12  117 2:20  117 2:22  116 3  118 3:13-14  117, 118 3:14  116 3:26  118 9:10  118 9:27  118 10:8  116 17:19  118 27:3  118 27:8  118 28:58  118 29:29  118 31:12  118 32  94–6 32:19-27  94 32:28-33  94 32:35-36  94 32:36  96 32:39  94 32:41  94 32:44  118 32:46  118 34:10  116 Deuteronomic history  115–16, 118, 121 Joshua  61, 115, 117–18, 119, 120, 121, 277, 278, 280, 282, 284 4:9  116 8:34  118 9  118 9:27  116 12:5  117 13  118 13:1  118 13:13  117 15  118 16  118 16:10  116 21:43-45  118 24:27  118 Judg. 4  273, 275, 277, 282 4-5  273

413

11  275, 281, 284 13-16  273, 278, 279, 283–5 Ruth  3, 277, 279, 281 1 Sam.  3 9:1-2  333 15  232, 233, 325 15:8  333 2 Sam. 12:1b-7  265–6 12:7a  265–6 13  192 1 Kings  3 19  356 2 Kgs 2-9  275 11  275, 277, 280, 283 Esther  3, 188, 278, 280, 283, 322, 324, 325, 329, 331, 332 1  330 2  331 2:5  333 2:7  329 2:12-17  328 2:20  328 3:1  333 3:1-6  324 8:7-10  326 8:17  326 9  325 9:2-3  326 9:11-14  330 9:13-14  325 Esther (LXX) 1:1a-b  333 1:1a-l  333 3:13a-g  331 4:17-17z  333 5:1-2  327 5:2a  333 8:12q  333 10:3a-k  333 Job  3, 78, 200–1, 208, 246, 277, 282, 336, 338

414 Scripture Index 5:4  201 14  201 14:7  201 14:14-15  201 14:21  201 21:19  201 27:14  201 42:16-17  208 Psalms  249 149  232 Proverbs  199–202, 207 4:3-6  199 16:31  199 17:6  199 19:18  199 30  207 30:8  207 Ecclesiastes  201–2, 207, 208, 246 2:19  202 2:21  202 2:24  201 3:16-20  201 3:18  207 3:19-20  201 4:9  208 6:2-3  201 6:12  202 7:14  202 7:15  201 8:7  202 9  202 9:9  208 10:14  202 11:8  202 Song of Solomon 2:16-3:4a  330 Isaiah  249 7:14  313 9:6-7  313 11:6  313 53  347–8 53:2-3  347 53:11  354

Jeremiah  277, 281 19  62 20:7  192 Ezek. 37  62, 341 Daniel  22, 28, 29, 30–1, 125, 276, 277, 278, 280, 281, 336 5  125 7-12  33 7:2-15  30 7:17-26  30 8:3-14  30 8:19-25  30 8:26  30 9:24-27  30 12:4  30 12:9  30 13  275, 280, 283 (Susannah) Jonah  78, 246, 281 The Gospel(s) (texts)  3, 39, 41–2, 75–6, 79–91, 132, 133, 139, 140, 142, 147, 181, 217, 219, 246, 249–50, 257, 267, 273, 274, 278, 280, 283, 312, 318, 335, 338, 339, 340, 342, 348, 349, 350, 351, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 362, 363, 366, 386, 389 Matthew  84–9, 90, 140, 148, 243, 284, 335, 336, 341, 348, 349 1-2  81 1:23  313 2:11  313 2:16-18  219, 257 3:7-10  88 4:1-11  335–6, 339 4:3  216 5-7  75, 84, 91, 134, 267, 360 5:38-40  385 5:41  385 5:43-44  385 5:44  131 7:12  384 10:34  141, 250 13:33  268 13:47  268

Scripture Index 14:1-12  358, 361, 362, 363, 365, 366 14:6  366 16:20-21  385 16:23  219 18:23-35  267 18:34  268 25:31-46  260, 267–8 22:32  229 26:22  356 26:25  356 26:51  387 26:51-52  386 26:52  233, 387 26:55  250 26:67-68  350 27:25  348 27:26  180, 350 27:26b  350 27:28-31  350 27:48  373, 388 28:8  356 Mark  78, 80, 81, 83–8, 90, 249, 257, 284, 318, 335, 336, 341, 342, 349, 356 1:1  336 1:3  88 1:6  339 1:11  336 1:12-13  335–6, 339, 341, 342, 343, 344 1:14  81 2:1-2  85–6 6:14-29  81, 358, 361, 362, 363, 365, 366 6:22  366 8:33  219 9:13  81 11:29-33  81 12:1-9  267 14:8  249 14:47  387 14:48  250 14:51  373 14:65  350 15:15  180 15:15b  350 15:17  350 15:19  350 15:36  388 16:8  335, 356

415

Luke  84–9, 90, 243, 265, 269, 284, 335, 341, 349, 356 1-2  81 1:1  84 1:32  313 1:35  313 2:1-2  325 2:29-32  354 3:1-2  325 3:7-9  88 4:1-13  335–6, 338, 339 4:3  216 6:17-49  267 6:27  131 6:35  131 7:36-50  91 9:56  387 10:18  219 10:30-36  268 12:16-20  265 12:17  269 12:17-19  268 12:47  230 15:11-32  265 15:15-16  268 15:17-19  268 15:30  268 16:1-8  268 16:3  269 16:19-31  265 16:23-25  268 18:8b  143 18:18-25  269 20:17  269 22:38  250 22:44  353 22:50  387 22:52  250 22:63-65  350 23:11  350 23:22  181 23:34  385, 389–90 23:42-43  389 24:5  356 John  39, 40, 84, 88, 90, 139, 144, 284, 318, 349, 356 1:1-18  84, 85, 90, 341 1:19  87

416 Scripture Index 1:35-40  88 2:1-12  124, 128 6:52-60  150 7:34  143 7:53-8:11  84, 124, 128 9:25  85 11  84, 87, 359 11:49  257 12:1-8  91 13:34-35  144 14:9  84 18:1-3  181 18:10  386, 387 18:15  88 18:36  249, 387 19:1  350 19:1-3  350 19:19  388 19:25-37  88 19:30  389 19:35  88 20:2-8  88 21:24-25  88 Acts  280, 284 2:3-4  246 2:5  246 2:9-11  246 2:11  246 2:22-36  246 Rom 1:17  101 8:19  101 8:20-21  101 8:21  101 8:22  101 8:23  101 12:19-21  96 1 Cor. 9:24  391 13  144

1  98 2  98 5  98 7  98 9  98 16  98 Heb. 10:26-31  96 James  284 2:13  262 4:8-9  232 1 Pet. 2:18-19  232 2 Peter  246 Jude  246 1 Jn 4:7-21  144 Revelation  3, 21–4, 28–33, 144, 243, 281, 283 1:1  30 1:3  30 1:11  30 1:20  30 5:5  30 7:13-17  30 10:4  30 17:6-18  30 19:11-21  267 21:1  31 Judith  124, 275, 277, 280, 283 1 Enoch  28, 29, 31 1-36  289 6-11  289 2 Baruch  29

1 Tim. 6:12  391

4 Ezra  29

Tit. 2:9  233

Gospel of Thomas  68, 89, 284

Philemon  98

Gospel of Peter  141